Lives in Cricket No 7 - Richard Daft

limited edition signed and numbered by the author as No. 173. The numbers mounted as would-be subscribers approached Richard or Tillotsons. C.J.Britton believed that 300 copies were printed. That the trade edition, also published in 1893, sold widely – at three shillings and sixpence – is demonstrated by the ease with which copies can still be purchased today. Its cover, originally a deep green, has matured to bluish black. The printing of the text is identical to that of the large-paper limited edition in which the print sits amid wide margins. Both editions contain xiv prelims followed by 274 pages. Whether Richard could have put the book together without the help of his elder son, Richard Parr Daft, we shall never know. Richard junior had spent years listening to his father’s stories, playing all kinds of sport with him, and managing the Radcliffe brewery. We get a glimpse of the relationship between father and sons from Old Ebor’s piece about Richard in Talks with Old English Cricketers published in 1900. Clearly, members of the family were around Richard when the author, A.W.Pullin, interviewed him at home: there is a teasing intervention towards the end when the discussion moved to Richard’s continuing career as an active cricketer. He was aged about 63: ‘When not umpiring, Richard Daft still plays with and stimulates the Notts Castle team, and not infrequently shows the rising generation the kind of cricket that made him famous.’ . . . ‘It is the first twenty minutes that trouble me’ he says, ‘getting my muscles free; my sight is as good as ever it was.’ Old Ebor gathered from another member of the Castle team present (perhaps Richard junior or Harry) that Mr. Daft is a martinet in the field. ‘If you miss a catch, you take the first train home rather than face him. If you have got a few runs and look proud, he will tell you, “If some of you fellows get six, you want to wrap them up in a parcel and carry them home.” Then when I get wickets with my insignificant bowling, he tells me, “What wretched piffle! It’s too bad to hit . . .” but I gather the Castle men venerate their leader!’ The best-known part of Kings of Cricket is Andrew Lang’s introduction. This wonderful piece of imaginative writing forms, as Lang intended, an elegant gateway to the book, though he is mildly critical of the absence from the reminiscences of much on university cricket – though Richard’s association with Oxford and Kings of Cricket 121