Lives in Cricket No 7 - Richard Daft

Chapter Nineteen A Match Too Far? At the end of July 1891, Arthur Shrewsbury hurt his hand and was unavailable for Notts’ needle match against Surrey beginning on the August Bank Holiday. The Notts Committee were well aware of Richard’s continuing prowess on the cricket field: they asked him to play at The Oval, and without hesitation he accepted. This was a risky undertaking: Surrey were all-powerful. The mainstays of their bowling were George Lohmann, with his variations in pace and style – ‘neither fast nor slow man’; Bill Lockwood of great pace with a well-concealed slow delivery; and John Sharpe, very quick left-arm. All of them were England cricketers, contributing to a formidable attack: Lockwood and Sharpe were both Notts-born. That year, Surrey won 12 of their 16 matches. Many critics felt that it was a weakness on the part of the Notts committee to have to call upon a man in his fifty-sixth year to fill a vacancy in an emergency. Richard, though, felt in fine fettle: he had scored 107 the day before journeying up to London on the Sunday which preceded the Bank Holiday. ‘For some reason or other I never felt more fit for run-getting since I first began to play’ was his happy recollection. He had made his first-class debut at The Oval thirty-three years before: on this occasion, with the weather threatening storms, Surrey won the toss and elected to bat, and so Richard stepped out once more on the turf and took up his position at point. He had never fielded there in his professional career. ‘Although I tried my utmost to keep my attention on the game, my thoughts would constantly stray away of themselves to memories of other days. I thought of the match in 1858 and of those who took part in it, and tried to reckon up how many were now alive of the two old elevens and how many had been bowled out by the great bowler, Death.’ The Times reporter noted: ‘It is a curious thing that he should have come back after a lapse of ten years and then as a substitute for Shrewsbury who has imitated him in style with a success that made the copy almost equal to the original . Sunday’s storms had left the ground terribly soft. Showers prevented the turf growing 112