“A better display of the art of cricket was never witnessed”: How Fuller Pilch became the best batter in the world

Fuller Pilch (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

In discussions of who might have been the greatest or most influential cricketers of all time, there is a tendency to favour more recent players. Most critics understandably nominate those who they have seen in person, although an exception is usually made for the inevitable Don Bradman, whose statistical dominance makes him a special case. Perhaps one or two players from earlier periods, for whom there is plenty of film available (preferably on Youtube), might warrant a mention but once discussion moves further back than living memory, former stars are usually neglected, usually accompanied by assertions that cricketers from so long ago cannot possibly have been as good as their modern counterparts. This phenomenon is intensified by the lack of statistical detail available for comparison, and a suspicion that — depending on the viewpoint of whoever is judging — it must have been easier to score runs or take wickets back in the dim and distant past. One or two aficionados might buck the trend and name older players such as Walter Hammond, Jack Hobbs or Victor Trumper, but for most cricket followers these are at best just names that they have heard. And then there is the case of someone like Ranjitsinhji, recorded by the history books as the inventor of the leg-glance (but who is perhaps even more interesting for his adventures off the field). Or what about W. G. Grace? To those familiar with cricket history, he might stand comparison with Bradman: the man who invented modern batting, combining forward play, back play, attack and defence. But if we go back even further, cricket was a very different game on (and off) the field, so that any hope of statistical comparison breaks down hopelessly. Which is unfortunate because if we continue backwards, we come across names that were legends for a century after their playing days were over.

Standing at the head of this semi-legendary list was Fuller Pilch, perhaps the most famous batter before the emergence of W. G. Grace. During his playing days, there was a general consensus that Pilch was the best batter in England — and therefore the world. While never achieving the statistical dominance of those who followed — for example Grace, Ranjitsinhji, Hobbs, Hammond — any impartial assessment has to place Pilch among those names because of what he achieved at a time when batting was often little more than a lottery. When Grace emerged, it was with Pilch that he was most often compared in trying to decide who was the greatest; and not everyone agreed that Grace was better than Pilch. And across the vast span of time between the end of Pilch’s career in 1854 and the modern day, one of his batting innovations has survived and continues to be one of the foundations of the game.

Before delving too deeply into Pilch’s story, it is worth establishing how very different cricket was when he was at his peak in the 1830s and 1840s. Cricket was played irregularly and few county teams even existed; there were no competitions or cups or championships and fixtures were arranged on an ad hoc basis with no real central authority to coordinate them. Test cricket was years away. Many games were played, especially at the major venues such as Lord’s, between what were little more than scratch teams. Part of the problem was that, at a time before the railway network had become fully established, transporting teams across the country was simply uneconomical. Single-wicket matches were still extremely popular, and followed closely by the press and public. While there were amateur and professional cricketers (Pilch was a professional), the distinction was less pronounced than it became; later generations of amateurs were more eager to keep professionals in their place, but in Pilch’s time the relationship was more benevolent. He described it: “Gentlemen were gentlemen, and players much in the same position as a nobleman and his head keeper maybe.” And the concept of what today would be called first-class cricket was largely unknown, although there was a sense that some matches were more important than others.

On the field, it was a similarly different game. When Pilch first played at Lord’s in 1820, the only legal form of bowling was underarm. Although “round-arm” bowling — in which the ball could be released from shoulder height — was widely used and became very effective, it was not officially permitted until 1835. Few, if any, batters used pads or gloves and on the field, long-stop was an essential position. The science of tending to pitches was almost unknown, and therefore the wickets were rough and untamed: the ball bounced unevenly (shooters were common) and could rise sharply if it struck the stones which were found in many playing surfaces. For bowlers who spun the ball, there was a huge amount of help from the pitch. Furthermore, games were generally played without a boundary — all hits were run out, with no fours or sixes. There might have been exceptions; during Pilch’s benefit match in 1839, wagons were used to enclose the ground, but we do not know if hits beyond this point counted as extra runs. But one contemporary critic said that “Pilch played cricket, W. G. plays boundary”. In these circumstances, run-scoring was incredibly challenging; reaching double figures was an achievement and scores of 20 were perhaps as valuable as a century in modern cricket. And the development of round-arm (which gradually metamorphosed into over-arm) bowling was even more of a challenge; the big scores that had begun to accumulate before 1820 against simply lob-bowling disappeared and did not reappear until the time of Grace. Cricket had become a low-scoring game, and the surviving statistics reflect this. Those who later championed the claims of Pilch as one of the best ever were quick to remind audiences how difficult it was to score back in the 1830s and 1840s.

This, therefore, was the cricket world into which Pilch emerged and established himself as the best; alongside Nicholas Felix and Alfred Mynn, he became one of the few household names who played the sport. How did he reach that peak?

Fuller Pilch was born on 17th March 1804, at Horningtoft in Norfolk. He was the seventh (not the youngest as has often been claimed) child of Nathaniel Pilch (a tailor) and Frances Fuller (who was the widowed Nathaniel’s second wife). Records are scarce from so long ago — individuals were not recorded on the census until Pilch was 37 — and so there is much that we do not know. But Pilch’s later fame meant that some details were recorded; he and his two older brothers (the only three out of Nathaniel and Frances’ five sons to survive until adulthood) William and Nathanial followed their father’s trade, becoming tailors. However all three proved to be good cricketers as well. There are suggestions — based on one questionable newspaper report — that Pilch spent time working in Sheffield as a young man, and learned cricket there, but it is perhaps more likely that he played village cricket in Norfolk.

There are more plausible claims that Pilch was coached by William Fennex, one of the Hambledon stars from the period in the late eighteenth century when cricket’s popularity first exploded, and one of the first men to use what would today be known as forward play; Fennex himself claimed to have taught Pilch how to bat. The author Frederick Gale wrote in 1883: “Fennex, be it remembered that he inaugurated the free forward play, and taught it to Fuller Pilch, and Fuller Pilch taught the world; for I feel confident, in my own mind, that all the fine forward play which one sees now sometimes, is simply the reflex of what Fuller Pilch developed in a manner which has never been surpassed by any living man (except W. G. [Grace]), and that, too, in days when grounds were less true, and pads and gloves were unknown. And I say of my friend W. G., that he has simply perfected the art which Pilch taught, though Pilch was never such an all-round man as our present champion.” We shall return to Pilch’s pioneering forward play later.

As Pilch improved as a cricketer, he was selected to play for Norfolk — in reality at that time little more than the Holt Cricket Club — and he made his debut in “big cricket” when he played for Norfolk against the MCC at Lord’s in 1820. Pilch was just seventeen at the time, and played alongside his brothers Nathaniel and Francis. But the three fielded while William Ward scored 278 runs, the highest innings in what would today be called first-class cricket until W. G. Grace scored 344 in 1876. Pilch, at that time picked as much for his under-arm bowling as his batting, scored 0 and 2 as the MCC won by 417 runs. But for modern statisticians, this was his first-class debut, even though no-one would have had any notion of what that meant at the time.

Fuller Pilch in 1852 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

The irregular and disorganised nature of cricket at this time mean that it is hard to track Pilch’s career in terms of statistical achievements. But he gradually became a more accomplished batter even though he did not play anything else recognised today as “first-class” until 1827. In 1823, he moved to Bury St Edmonds, and from 1825 to 1828, he played as a professional for Bury Cricket Club — his first century was scored for the club against Woodbridge in 1830 — and represented Suffolk. In this period he made some substantial scores and was selected for the Gentlemen v Players match for the first time in 1827. That year, he also played for a team styled “England” against Sussex in a series of three matches intended as a trial of the fairness of the new style of “round-arm” bowling (used by Sussex in those matches) and top-scored in the first game with 38. He did not stand out in the other games and, with several other “England” players threatened to pull out of the final game unless the Sussex bowlers reverted to underarm, before ultimately agreeing to play. But Pilch quickly learned to face the new style of bowling, adopted it himself, and when asked in later years about what it was like facing the old underarm style, replied: “Gentlemen, I think you might put me in on Monday morning and get me out by Saturday night”.

Pilch moved to Norwich in 1829, becoming the landlord of the Anchor of Hope Inn, and began to play for Norfolk, which was established on a more formal basis in 1827. Within a few years, it was one of the strongest teams in England, not least owing to Pilch’s batting. And in 1833, he became famous through two single-wicket matches against Tom Marsden, the “Champion” of England. Single-wicket was a highly popular form of the game at the time and was played under various rule. The main versions involved two players opposing each other without assistance in the field. Hits behind the wicket did not count, and batters had to run to the other end of the pitch and back to score a single run. Pilch comfortably won the two matches: in the first, played at Norwich, he won after dismissing Marsden for seven, hitting 73 runs himself and then bowling Marsden seventh ball for a duck, winning by an innings. In the return match at Sheffield, before 12,000 spectators, Pilch scored 78, to which Marsden could only reply with 25. Pilch hit 102 and facing an impossible task, Marsden was dismissed for 31. Just over ten years later, William Denison said of this game: “Pilch’s batting was of the finest description, and a better display of the art of cricket was never witnessed in any former match.” The contest was a huge attraction and received a great deal of press coverage. But for all his success, Pilch disliked single wicket matches and rarely took part: he turned down several opportunities (he and Alfred Mynn seem to have actively avoided facing each other in that format) and only seems to have played one other game (in 1845).

In other cricket, Pilch’s fame grew and there were hardly any big matches in which he did not feature. He played for Cambridge Town, “England”, the MCC, Norfolk, the Players, Suffolk and Surrey, and as a given man for the Gentlemen. He also featured in several of the “novelty” teams which were popular at the time, such as for the Single against the Married or the Right-handed against Left-handed. Perhaps his greatest year came in 1834. In two games for Norfolk against Yorkshire, he scored 87 not out, and 73 and 153 not out; he also scored 105 not out for England against Sussex and 60 for the Players against the Gentlemen. According to Gerald Howat (in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), “his aggregate of 811 runs in major matches was not surpassed for twenty-seven years.” Such considerations were meaningless in 1834 — batting averages were not widely published, if at all — but his average of 43 in those games dwarfed the next best, which was only 18. And in matches retrospectively reckoned first-class, he scored 551 runs at 61.22. But perhaps more importantly he had reached three figures in “major matches” for the first time, in a period when such feats were a rarity.

By then probably the best batter in the world, Pilch was in considerable demand and Norfolk could not hold on to him. A Kent county team — the second such attempt — was founded in Town Malling by a pair of lawyers called Thomas Selby and Silas Norton. After the 1835 season, they persuaded Pilch to move to Town Malling in return for £100 per year, for which he would play for Kent and manage the cricket ground. He made his Kent debut in 1836 and remained with the county until 1854, during which period he was a key figure in making it the strongest team in England. Perhaps its most powerful opposition came from another of Pilch’s teams: William Clarke’s professional touring side, the All-England Eleven. Clarke’s team made a huge impact on English cricket, and Pilch was a founding member, playing for the Eleven from 1846 until 1852. He played at least 65 matches for the Clarke’s Eleven, usually in games played “against the odds” (i.e. against teams featuring more than eleven players, to make the game competitive), and scored four half-centuries. But Pilch was not limited to playing for these teams. At a time when county cricket was an unregulated free-for-all, Pilch also made appearances for Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex. He was also a dominant figure in club cricket; he named his innings of 160 for Town Malling against Reigate in 1837 as one of his best.

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A scorecard showing Pilch’s innings of 60 for All-England against Nottingham in 1842

While Pilch was an undoubted success on the pitch — for example, he was the Kent’s leading scorer in twelve out of nineteen seasons — he did not play regularly because Kent, like all county teams in this period, only rarely took the field. And his statistical achievements have been utterly dwarfed by the inflation in scores that took place in the later part of the nineteenth century; to a modern audience, his average looks poor but at the time, given the challenges of batting, it was a different story. His record surpassed that of any of his contemporaries. He scored eleven fifties for Kent in 84 matches today reckoned first-class, with a highest score of 98, and his average of 19.61 was very good for the time. Of these matches, 36 were played against a team styled as England, which contained many of the best players: in these games, he scored four fifties and averaged 18.15. And in the Gentlemen v Players match, which was the highest form of representative cricket in England in the days before Test matches, he played 23 matches — 21 for the Players (the professional team) and two as a “given man” for the Gentlemen (the amateur team) to make the match more competitive — and averaged 14.90. As a point of contrast, he was easily the dominant batter for Kent in this period. Of his contemporaries to score 1,000 runs for the county, none approached his average: Tom Adams had 2,291 runs at 12.58; Nicholas Felix scored 1,528 runs at 16.79; and Ned Wenman had 1,063 runs at 10.42.

Hidden among the fragmented and hard-to-process figures, Pilch was remarkably consistent. It was a matter of some note that in 1836, he reached double figures in 13 innings (five of which surpassed 20); and in 1841 he reached double figures 16 times (not all of which are today judged as first-class) within which were two scores in the 20s, two in the 30s, three in the 40s and one in the 60s. In his Sketches of the Players (1844), William Denison listed many of these achievements, and wrote of Pilch: “But there are other seasons wherein Pilch has outshone all his competitors, and were they to be enumerated, it would be be to extend this publication to a size far beyond that of a ‘sketch’.” He also stated: “As a bat, [Pilch] has been one of the brightest luminaries of the cricket world, during the last 20 years.” In short, there was little doubt of Pilch’s class and superiority; he was quite simply the best batter who had played until then.

This was a precarious time for county clubs and several teams flitted in and out of existence. Kent was no exception: the Town Malling incarnation of the club struggled financially and collapsed in 1841. But Pilch maintained his Kent contention. When the brothers John and William Baker, the founders of the Beverley Club at Canterbury, took over the organisation of Kent teams in 1842 (when their club effectively assumed the role of the county team), they appointed Pilch as the manager of the Beverley Ground. When the proto-Kent team moved to the St Lawrence Ground in 1847, Pilch again moved with them, taking charge of that ground too. There are a few other traces of his life around this time. Despite claims by Denison, there is little evidence that Pilch ran a public house in Town Malling. Instead, he seems to have worked as a tailor in cricket’s off-season; this was the occupation recorded on the 1841 census (which was taken when he and the Kent team were staying at The Bear in Lewes, during a match against Sussex).

For all of Pilch’s later claims — such as the Kent team being a “eleven brothers’, or that “as soon as a man had been 12 months among the cherry orchards, hop gardens and pretty girls, he could not help becoming Kentish to the backbone” — his loyalty to Kent perhaps owed more to finance than emotion. After being awarded a benefit match — the lucrative Kent v England game in 1839 — he accepted an offer (“too good to refuse”) from Sussex to move county; it required the intervention of some of Kent’s wealthier patrons to persuade Pilch to remain where he was.

Pilch played on until 1855, when he was 52 — he later admitted that he and several of his team-mates kept going too long, meaning that Kent declined in the 1850s — having spent 35 years playing at what then was the top level. In terms of what is today judged as first-class games, Pilch scored 7,147 runs at 18.61, including three centuries and 24 fifties. He also took 142 wickets (although analyses do not survive for most of these). But it was noted at the time that he had scored ten centuries in total, a remarkable number for the time; he was also reckoned to have appeared 103 times at Lord’s.

The Saracen’s Head in Canterbury, photographed around 1945; the building was demolished in 1969 (Image: Dover Kent Archives)

Pilch continued to play minor cricket for one more season, appearing for the Beverley Club in Canterbury, and then from 1856 until 1866 concentrated on umpiring: in this period, he stood in 28 matches today reckoned first-class, almost all of which were played in Canterbury (although he had no great reputation as an umpire). He also had other cricketing interests. He began to work as a bat manufacturer — his occupation as given on the 1851 census — and continued as what would today be termed the head groundsman of the St Lawrence Ground until 1867. This was not the only ground with which he was associated. In 1849–50, he went into partnership with Edward Martin, another Kent cricketer, and developed the Prince of Wales Ground in Oxford, where he undertook winter coaching. This business partnership ended in 1855, at which point Pilch began another partnership with his nephew William Pilch, in whose house he was living in 1851. The pair became joint licensees of a Canterbury public house called the Saracen’s Head. It is not quite clear how the responsibility was split: the proprietors were often given as “F. and W. Pilch”, but William was sometimes named alone, and was listed as the head of the household on the 1861 census. From the little evidence that survives, William looks to have been the primary licensee. For example, on the 1861 census when Pilch was living at the Saracen’s Head with his nephew, William was listed as an innkeeper employing three male and three female servants; Pilch by contrast gave his occupation as a cricketer.

This particular business scheme was destined to end badly. William continued to run the Saracen’s Head for most of the 1860s but drifted into growing financial strife. Part of the problem was the new railway station that had been built in Canterbury; whereas the Pilches had previously enjoyed the custom of people (such as farmers) who would stay overnight in their establishment, the growth of the railways made this unnecessary as journeys could be made more quickly with no need for overnight accommodation. As a result, the Saracen’s Head lost valuable business. But there was also something of a financial crisis at the time that affected many small businesses after a leading bank in London collapsed. It was probably a combination of these factors that led to William’s ruin: in 1868 he was imprisoned for debt and declared bankrupt the following year, owing his creditors almost £700. By then, Pilch’s health was bad and he had been forced to give up his work as groundsman. His friends seemed to think that the problems over money with the Saracen’s Head had a negative effect on him; more than one report stated that it had been Pilch himself who had been declared bankrupt. Frederick Gale for example wrote in The Game of Cricket (1888): “The last time I saw Fuller Pilch was a few months before his bankruptcy, which, I believe, killed him. The world did not prosper with him as it ought, and he was out of spirits, and got so excited about the old times that I had to drop the subject.”

Pilch’s failing health — he was suffering from rheumatism — forced him to give up work and money became a struggle, especially with the problems faced by his nephew. Some Kent supporters arranged a subscription which it was hoped would provide him with a pension, but it fell short of expectations; some wealthy patrons had to top up the fund to provide him with an income of one pound per week. In April 1870, Pilch’s health took a turn for the worse. On 1 May 1870, he died at William’s home on Lower Bridge Street in Canterbury from what was then known as dropsy but would today be called fluid retention (or oedema); the actual cause was perhaps most likely to be heart failure. As a mark of the respect in which Pilch was held, a collection was taken among the public, the proceeds of which were used for a memorial. An obelisk was placed over his grave at St Gregory’s Church, which was moved to the St Lawrence ground in 1978 after the church had fallen into disuse. In 2008, Pilch returned to the news when plans by Christ Church University to redevelop the site of St Gregory’s were paused after it became clear that no-one was sure where Pilch was buried. An old photograph of the memorial eventually cleared up the mystery, and work went ahead; a new headstone was placed to mark the approximate location of Pilch’s grave.

The original memorial to Pilch in St Gregory’s churchyard, Canterbury, in the 1950s (Image: Kent Online)

So much for the facts. It is perhaps not as complete a story as we would like, nor could it ever be as detailed as a biography of Grace or Ranjitsinhji or Hobbs because it was plainly a very different world for cricketers of Pilch’s time. It is not possible to simply go through each season and note his scores in the biggest games or reel off impressive aggregates and averages. And yet there was no doubt among Pilch’s contemporaries that he was the best of all. As it happens, it is possible to get a glimpse of what might have made Pilch so good. But that is not the only way in which his legend continued. His reputation endured so that when W. G. Grace came along, Pilch was still for many the point of comparison. For some who remembered him, Pilch’s success must have been more meretricious simply because batting was more difficult back then. And so, more than 30 years after his death and over half a century since he last took to a cricket field, Pilch’s name became embroiled in a debate that has never been settled: was cricket a sport that continually improved, or one that was in a permanent state of decline? Were those who played in the past better than those seen in contemporary cricket? Or were the current players the best of all time?

“The Star of the North”: The Life and Death of Tom Hunt

A drawing by John Corbett Anderson of the United Eleven of All England in 1855; Thomas Hunt is standing on the far left, cradling his bat (Image: via Playing Pasts)

Although it might seem like a recent phenomenon that cricket has been played in more than one format, there was a precedent in the distant past. Once upon a time, many of the leading players took part in something called single-wicket, but — in another historical foreshadowing — some were considerably better at single-wicket than the eleven-a-side version. One of these was a man called Tom Hunt. Typically for the period, he was somewhat rootless: he was born in Chesterfield, played for unofficial Yorkshire and Lancashire teams and played regularly for the Manchester and Sheffield clubs. In another echo across the years, like many professional cricketers, he played for whichever team offered him the best terms. But it was at single-wicket that he excelled, and his reputation inspired legends and memories long after his death in an unfortunate accident at the end of a cricket match.

The two formats of nineteenth century cricket require a little explanation. As well as the traditional game, in which first-class cricket (although such a concept was some way from coming into existence) was becoming pre-eminent despite a dizzyingly muddled and disordered fixture list, there was a popular variant known as “single wicket”. The latter had its own set of rules, its own section in the Laws of Cricket, and its own stars. In the days before railway travel made it economically viable to transport teams of cricketers across the country, men became famous for their solo adventures, challenging all-comers to a game of single wicket. But single-wicket was different in several ways to the sport — then and now — as a team game. Despite the implication of “single” (which referred to how many sets of stumps were used, not how many players on each team), some of the games were two-against-two, three-against-three or more. The bowler only delivered to one end and the batter had to run two lengths of the pitch — touching the stumps at the other end — to complete one run; there could be no overthrows but the batter could not run again once the fielder had thrown the ball across the pitch. Strokes behind the wicket did not count, nor did catches in that area. In some games, fielders helped out but in others, the single cricketer competing had to do all his own fielding. Timings were generous given how tiring this could be: bowlers were allowed up to a minute to recover between deliveries. As with many forms of cricket in this period, betting was doubtless a strong driving force but the attraction of seeing leading players competing against each other was clear, particularly at a time when county cricket had barely got off the ground.

Some of the best players of the mid-nineteenth century were highly effective exponents of single-wicket: men such as Tom Marsden and Fuller Pilch were famous long after their playing days had ended, and both were good single-wicket players. Maybe the most famous (and anticipated) of all single-wicket games — one which has been written about several times — was played between Alfred Mynn and Nicholas Felix at Lord’s in 1846. These two men were among the best cricketers of their time, and the match was extraordinary. Mynn was a round-arm fast bowler and Felix was a lob bowler; both men could bat extremely well. Mynn had been undefeated in single-wicket games since beating James Dearman of Yorkshire in “home” and “away” games in 1838 and was therefore the “Champion of England” (in a rather informal sense). For this game, both competitors were allowed two fielders to support them.

Alfred Mynn (left) and Nicholas Felix illustrated before their first single-wicket game of 1846 (Image: via ESPNcricinfo)

Before a crowd of around 3,000, Felix batted first and was bowled without scoring from his sixteenth ball. Part of the problem was that, as a strong cutter, Felix was hampered by the rules which did not permit runs behind the wicket. Felix had hit eleven of the sixteen deliveries, but failed to score. In reply Mynn made five runs, hitting every one of Felix’s sixteen gentle lobs, before he was caught from a full-blooded hit back at the bowler. The latter therefore batted again and over the course of two hours faced an incredible 247 deliveries from Mynn, most delivered at pace on a notoriously uneven Lord’s pitch. This time, he hit 175 of them, many of these being beautiful cuts that thrilled the crowd but from which no runs were possible. In all he scored just three runs before he was bowled; even with the addition of a wide from Mynn, his total of four meant that he had lost by an innings and one run. In a 2016 article on single-wicket, Jon Hotten described this match as “the format’s final and defining contest” and “the last great game of single-wicket cricket in England”. But it was not quite the end; for example, Mynn and Felix had a re-match later in 1846 at the White Hart Ground in Bromley. Felix lost again, over the course of two days.

But if the Lord’s game was the high-point of the single-wicket game, less prestigious matches continued to flourish for many years. The Cricket History website includes a list of single-wicket matches; even though the list cannot be comprehensive, it is instructive. Over 1,200 games are listed which took place in the 1840s, but if the format lost prestige after that it is not reflected in the games recorded: there were close to 1,350 in the 1850s and around 1,500 in the 1860s before numbers fell away dramatically. There continued to be a market for single-wicket after the Mynn-Felix game, including between big names. Some of these became real marathons, tests of stamina as much as cricketing skill.

One particularly prolonged encounter came in 1849, when Tom Hunt and Robert Crispin Tinley faced each other in Burton-on-Trent over the course of three days in August and September. This contest was sufficiently attractive for Bell’s Life to cover it in depth. Both men were good batters and fast round-arm bowlers. The “home” player Cris Tinley was a promising 18-year-old professional from Burton. He went on to play for Nottinghamshire and, inevitably for good players in this period, for William Clarke’s All-England Eleven. He was associated with the latter for twenty years and also took part in the second tour of Australia by an English team, that of George Parr in 1863–64. In later years he ran a Burton inn and died at the age of 70 in 1900; Tinley’s Wisden obituary said that he “held a very high place among the cricketers of a past generation”. His opponent in 1849 was a far more established player; Bell’s Life noted that Hunt was ten years older, four inches taller and four stones heavier than Tinley. The author noted also that Hunt was extremely experienced at single wicket, and “has been invariable successful; for several years he has given a challenge to all England, and has in vain sought for a competitor to the championship.” In 1849, Hunt had listed a challenge in Bell’s Life to anyone who wanted to face him; his preference was for John Wisden but when the latter declined, Tinley took up the challenge, which offered a prize of £50 to the winner.

Cris Tinley photographed later in life (Image: Trent Bridge)

The young Tinley, playing his first single-wicket game, more than held his own. On the first day (31 August), Tinley won the toss and batted first but was dismissed from his first ball, attempting to hit a leg-side ball and skying it to Hunt. Nevertheless, Tinley impressed with his pace bowling; Hunt struggled to score at first and was hit several times. At one point he had to retire for repairs, and broke two bats, but gradually got on top. He batted for five hours, facing 418 deliveries and scoring 46 runs (with four wides in addition). Bell’s Life noted that he scored seven twos (the rest were ones) which suggests that there must have been some big hits as these would have been equivalent to a modern all-run four. The next day, Hunt in effect declared: he needed to be in Sheffield for an important match and needed to leave that evening; he therefore requested that Tinley should begin his innings. Hunt made a shaky start with the ball and Tinley scored eight runs in the first nine minutes before his opponent settled down. But even then, Hunt could not dismiss Tinley, who had scored 30 runs in 130 minutes when “dinner” was called; after the interval, Tinley had reached a total of fifty after another 80 minutes when, at 5pm, Hunt requested a postponement as he was exhausted and needed to leave for Sheffield. The day ended with Tinley undefeated after scoring 45 runs from 266 balls (plus four wides and a no-ball). His hits included a three (equivalent to an all-run six) and ten twos; the locals were impressed, particularly those who had backed him at very long odds, and he had done his reputation no harm.

The match resumed on 14 September — in the meantime Hunt had played in big games at Sheffield and Manchester — with the scores level. Tinley, continuing his second innings, scored another six runs in 90 minutes and 152 deliveries — and was gifted four wides. Hunt resorted to bowling lobs; these were not particularly good but made Tinley hesitant and eventually he gave a return catch. His total of 51 was scored from 431 deliveries; the extras left Hunt needing eleven runs to win. It took him just 29 minutes to score them, helped by six wides, from 48 deliveries. The drop in quality compared to the first two days disappointed spectators but Tinley had not disgraced himself and Hunt won without being dismissed in either innings, in the process extending his long unbeaten stretch. Unsurprisingly, the match accumulated legends in the retelling; as details became blurred in the memory, some said that the match had lasted “weeks” (technically this was true) and both men had scored hundreds before letting the other have a turn, and that neither man could dismiss the other for days.

As it happened, Hunt was a man about whom it might have been easy to build legends. Although never a famous figure nationally, he was renowned in the north of England and had an excellent career. His reputation was such that he was still being remembered as a formidable cricketer in the 1890s, fifty years after his unfortunate death. Even in 1907, Cricket remembered him as “one of the finest single-wicket players of his day”.

Thomas Hunt was born in Chesterfield on 2 September 1819, the son of Robert Hunt, a shoemaker, and Elizabeth Ralphs. Details on his early life are limited as his early years predate the legal requirement for births to be registered, and details of individuals were not recorded on the 1821 or 1831 census. In 1837, he married Jane Morley (a year younger than him and the daughter of a potter) at North Wingfield in Derbyshire, giving his occupation as a coachmaker. In 1840, their daughter Emily was born and the 1841 census records the family living in Mansfield; Hunt was once more listed as a coachmaker. However, Jane died in 1842, aged just 23.

It was during this turbulent period that Hunt emerged as a cricketer. From what can be pieced together, he made his name in single-wicket matches; it is not impossible to imagine that a scenario in which he answered a challenge in a newspaper as a way of making money. But however it happened, he very soon made an impression. In October 1843, Hunt played George Chatterton at Sheffield and scored 165; this seems to be the highest innings in that form of cricket. It was not his only remarkable performance. In November 1843, he defeated Sam Dakin by an innings and 40 runs. Two years later, in August 1845, he took on an eleven from Knaresborough single-handedly at Chesterfield and won. Bell’s Life listed the game in a review of the 1845 season as taking place on 14 August. Hunt scored 33 and bowled out Knaresborough for 16; in the second innings, he managed ten but his opponents could only score nine in reply, leaving Hunt the winner by eight runs. The Knaresborough eleven was entirely amateur and presumably not very good; Hunt also had “home” advantage and possibly — according to legend — one of the umpires was not entirely sober. Presumably Hunt also had fielders to assist him, otherwise it is hard to see how he could have defeated eleven men, no matter how poor they were.

These and other achievements in single wicket games earned Hunt the nickname “The Star of the North” and provided him with opportunities elsewhere. By the mid-1840s, he was playing as a professional for several clubs, most notably the Manchester Cricket Club, Sheffield Cricket Club, and the Wednesday Club of Sheffield (out of which cricket team grew Sheffield Wednesday Football Club). Through his connection with Sheffield, Hunt played several times for a team known as Yorkshire between 1845 and 1851 (not the official county team, which did not come into existence until 1863); he also played matches (which have been given retrospective first-class status) for Manchester and Sheffield, and for an unofficial Lancashire team in 1849 (both appearances coming against “Yorkshire”). In the early 1850s, Hunt was engaged as the professional and groundsman of Manchester Cricket Club; when a new ground was opened at Old Trafford in 1857, Hunt and his wife were given accommodation in the pavilion.

Despite his growing reputation as a cricketer, Hunt listed himself as a “coachman” on the 1851 census. By then, he lived in Sheffield with his new wife and family; he had married Elizabeth White, who was from Chesterfield, in Nottingham in 1848. They had several children: George Henry (born 1850) and Elizabeth (1851) were later followed by Ann (1855) and George Herbert (1857). However, at the time of the 1851 census, his daughter Emily, from his first marriage, was living with Hunt’s family back in the Chesterfield area.

During the 1850s, Hunt’s reputation reached its height. The best professional side in England was William Clarke’s All-England Eleven which travelled around the country playing local teams; only the growth of railways made it possible for such a team to exist and made it economical for whole teams (rather than individuals, as in the case of single-wicket games) to travel to matches any distance from home. Hunt had already played against Clarke’s eleven for Manchester and for Sheffield, bringing him to Clarke’s notice and in 1850 he joined the touring team. On some occasions, as was common practice, Hunt travelled with the eleven but was “loaned” to the opposition to give them a greater chance of success. He also appeared in several games which offered a clear sign that he was among the best cricketers in England: his first appearance at Lord’s was for the North against the MCC in 1847; in 1850, he played for the Players against the Gentlemen at Lord’s, for much of the nineteenth century unquestionably the most important fixture in England, during which the leading professionals faced the leading amateurs. He also played in another prestigious series of matches, representing the North against the South six times (three of which were at Lord’s). His greatest achievement in first-class cricket came in 1856, opening the batting for the North against the South, when he scored a century against leading bowlers — including John Wisden — at a time such achievements were rare. Bell’s Life described the innings of 102 as “surpassing for defence and style all that we ever saw.”

William Clarke’s All-England Eleven, pictured in 1847 before Hunt joined (Image: Wikipedia)

This was Hunt’s only score over fifty in matches today recognised as first-class, but his overall average of 15.11 in 39 matches was good for the period in which he played; it is worth comparing the career averages of leading contemporary players such as Fuller Pilch (18.61), Nicholas Felix (18.15) and Alfred Mynn (13.42). But as a cricketer, Hunt seems to have done a bit of everything; he could keep wicket (he had nine first-class stumpings) and his fast bowling was responsible for 67 first-class wickets. As a large, powerfully built man (he was 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed 12 stones), his reputation was for hitting, but Scores and Biographies called him a “fine, upright and scientific batsman”.

He was also involved in a dispute involving the leading professionals around this time. In 1852, a group of rebels who had become disgruntled with Clarke’s leadership of the All-England Eleven broke away to form the rival United All-England Eleven; Hunt was one of the original signatories to a letter which made public their unhappiness with Clarke. Mick Pope, in his Headingley Ghosts (2013), suggests that there was “no love lost between Hunt and Clarke, for whenever the opportunity arose Hunt thrashed Clarke’s lob bowling with great relish”. After Clarke died in 1856, an annual match between the All-England Eleven and the United All-England Eleven became one of the highlights of each season; Hunt played in the first two such fixtures, at Lord’s in 1857, under the captaincy of Wisden. One of his All-England opponents was Cris Tinley. In games such as these, when the team included the best cricketers in England, Hunt rarely, if ever, bowled but occasionally kept wicket. He performed this role in what became his final first-class game, for Manchester against Sussex at Eccles in September 1858.

By this time, Hunt was 39, having celebrated his birthday on the first day of that game, and, having gained weight, was perhaps past his best. He had played for the opposition in a couple of games for the All-England Eleven that season, perhaps indicating some kind of rapprochement after Clarke’s death. A week after he played against Sussex, Hunt appeared in a game in Rochdale, when an “All-England and United All-England Combined Eleven” played a local twenty-two (such games were usually against the odds to make for a better contest) at Merefield Cricket Ground. Alongside Hunt in the Rochdale team were H. H. Stephenson, John Jackson and Thomas Sherman, leading professionals whose role was to strengthen the opposition. For Hunt, it was quite a convenient outing as he lived nearby in Manchester.

The game was unremarkable; it was scheduled for three days, but the weather prevented much play on the first two. Hunt scored 0 and 9, and although Rochdale held their own, the home team collapsed before a crowd of around 5,000 when the weather relented on 11 September, the final day. Needing 80 to win in the fourth innings, they were 33 for thirteen (with eight wickets to fall) when time ran out and the game was drawn.

The location of Merefield Cricket Club was probably on the ground next to Castleton Hall on this 1851 Ordnance Survey Map (surveyed between 1844 and 1847). The railway line can be seen passing to the south-east of the ground. Unfortunately, there are no other maps from this period which might give more information; the next was created over forty years later when the ground was gone. (Image: National Library of Scotland, CC-BY-NC-SA licence)

At the end of the game, Hunt went to collect his fee of £20 but did not stay for the celebration being held at a nearby hotel as he wanted to get home to Manchester by the 7pm train. He had arranged to meet his wife at Manchester’s Victoria Station, as he had done after each the first two days’ play, from where they would take the omnibus to Old Trafford. There was a little-known shortcut from Merefield Cricket Club to Rochdale’s railway station, saving approximately two minutes, which involved going around the back of the pavilion and walking approximately 200 yards along the railway line. Hunt had apparently taken this route many times, including on the first two days of the match in question. After receiving his match fee, he left the ground via this route at around 6:40pm, according to one witness, “perfectly sober”. Accompanying him was a local man called John Wild, who had worked on the railway, but now assisted at Rochdale Cricket Club; Hunt had paid him to carry his bats to the train station. Wild went first along the train track, followed by Hunt around 100 yards behind. It was the practice of those working on the line to keep to the right so they would always see a train coming; perhaps because of his experience on the railway, this is what Wild did. Hunt, however, walked between the tracks.

Wild later told an inquest how a goods train (with around forty carriages) had come past; he had stepped aside to let it go. At the same moment, a passenger train was coming in the other direction travelling at ten or eleven miles per hour. The driver told the inquest that he had sighted Hunt from 100 yards, just after passing the cricket ground, having not seen him sooner owing to the goods train. He immediately shut off his engine and sounded his whistle. But Hunt, who had his back to the train, appeared not to hear it. The driver threw the engine into reverse but it was too late and the train struck Hunt, knocking him down and running over his legs. Both his legs were severed at the calf and the fingers of his left hand, which was on the rail, were crushed. The driver believed all six of his carriages passed over Hunt before the train stopped.

There were various explanations of why Hunt did not react to the train. Wild had previously given a slightly different version, as reported in the press but not repeated at the inquest, that Hunt had seemed “bewildered” by the approach of the train and had been unable to find a safe place to which he could escape, but the driver seems to have been clear (under oath) about what occurred. Another witness to the accident, also not called to the inquest, suggested that the other train had drowned out the sound of the approaching passenger train. The same witness also reported that an acquaintance of Hunt called James Clegg, who had been at the cricket match and had seen Hunt leave, was there; the witness said that Hunt did not initially realise the extent of his injuries and asked Clegg to help him to his feet. When he became aware of what had happened, the witness reported that Hunt said to Clegg: “Yes, I’m dying. I feel it. Lord forgive me. Lord forgive me.” Clegg was a witness at the inquest but did not repeat any of this, although he did state that he saw Hunt after the accident. There seems to have been some discussion at the inquest over whether Hunt was at least partially deaf, which his wife appears to have suggested after his death, but those who played alongside him dismissed such an idea, reporting that he had no problem hearing when a batter had edged a ball.

In the aftermath of the accident, passengers from the train immediately got out to help, and locals arrived on the scene. The time was around 6:50pm. Hunt was placed in a labourer’s truck and carried to the railway station, and when it was seen how serious his condition was, he was taken to a nearby hotel. Medical attention was given, but it was hopeless and Hunt died just after 9pm — five minutes before his wife arrived, having been urgently summoned from Manchester when it was realised that Hunt was dying. She had been warned on her arrival at Rochdale what had happened, but the attempts to prepare her for what she would see delayed her enough so that Hunt was dead before she reached the hotel. Most reports said that he was only conscious for a few minutes after the accident, apart from a few isolated moments. When news reached the celebrating cricketers at another hotel, they immediately ended their gathering and began a collection for Hunt’s widow and children.

An inquest was held on 15 September, four days after Hunt’s death. The coroner made clear that no-one, particularly the train driver, was responsible and the 16-man jury returned a verdict of accidental death. There was some argument about how much the train company could have done to prevent such incidents, and the discussion became quite heated at some points. A representative of the railway company emphasised that any such travel along the tracks was unauthorised; he insisted that his company bore no liability for what happened. The manager of the railway station conceded that he had allowed some people to travel along the line to the cricket ground, but Hunt was doing so without permission; the company representative seemed less than impressed by the discovery that anyone at all had been allowed to do so and the manager had clearly exceeded his authority. A recommendation from the coroner, endorsed by the jury, was that the railway company should prohibit anyone walking on the track. The representative of the company gave a donation there and then to the growing fund for Hunt’s family and planned to ask the directors, on behalf of Rochdale Cricket Club, to open a subscription. The company also waived a fee for transporting Hunt’s body back to Manchester. By the time of his burial later that day, the fund had raised over £70.

Hunt’s death was widely reported in newspapers, and the inquest was covered across the country, including in the Morning Chronicle in London. The fullest account of the death and inquest was printed in the Rochdale Observer; the details from the witness who claimed to have heard Hunt’s last words were printed in the Liverpool Mail. A later claim by R. S. Holmes in his History of Yorkshire County Cricket Club 1833–1903 (1904) that Hunt had been drunk was entirely without substance. A subscription was also opened for Hunt in Sheffield.

To compound the misery of Hunt’s wife Elizabeth, she was around four months pregnant with their fifth child, Henrietta (who was born in March 1859), at the time of his death. By the time of the 1861 census, she and four of the children (there is no further trace of George Henry; he was either dead or the family had subtracted eight years from his age and changed his second name to Herbert) were living in Hulme, Manchester. She listed herself as a “fundholder”, perhaps still living off the collections made for her late husband. The 1871 census lists Elizabeth (with the occupation of “housekeeper”) and the same four children still living in Hulme, but with an additional child, Bertha, born in 1865. Bertha died in late 1871, but the others were still at the same address in 1881. Mrs Hunt, and her daughters Elizabeth and Anne, still lived in Hulme in 1891, albeit at a different address, but she is listed as “living on her own means”; the three women, joined by George Herbert, are still there in 1901. By 1911, they had moved to Stretford and the 60-year-old Elizabeth was working as a shopkeeper, assisted by her sister Annie. Elizabeth Hunt née White died in June 1912, never having remarried. Only Emily (who was 17 when her father died) and Henrietta seem to have married and had children.

The Merefield Cricket Ground no longer exists; it was sold for redevelopment in 1867. The bowling club which succeeded to the land is still there; known today as the Castleton Bowling Club, it is surrounded by houses and remains close to the railway line and station where Tom Hunt was killed over 160 years ago.

“Most of them appeared afraid to play in their accustomed style”: The Curious History of Lob Bowling

Sketches by George Shepherd of a match at Lord’s around 1790; the top row of drawings shows underarm bowlers operating (Image: The Hambledon Men (1907) via Wikisource)

To most modern cricket fans, mention of underarm bowling brings to mind the infamous incident with Trevor Chappell in 1981, when the Australian bowled the final ball of a match underarm on the orders of his brother Greg, the team captain, to remove any possibility of New Zealand hitting a six to tie the game. Until then, underarm bowling had not been seen in important cricket for sixty years. It was — and remains — a forgotten part of cricket. But in the first days of the sport, all bowling was delivered underarm and even when changes in the laws made it obsolete from the early nineteenth century, “lob” bowling lingered for almost a century before dying out.

When cricket first rose to some kind of prominence in England in the eighteenth century, the only legal form of delivery was underarm. Bowlers rolled the ball along the ground (in the manner of bowls), sometimes quite quickly if the legends can be believed, at batters who wielded something akin to a modern hockey stick. Gradually, the more cunning bowlers realised that if they pitched, rather than rolled, the ball, it would bounce over the bat and onto the stumps; the result was a change in cricket bat design to something more similar to its modern counterpart to account for this new challenge. And so bowlers looked for a new advantage, which they sought by releasing the ball from higher and higher points. Over the first decades of the nineteenth century, the classic underarm method was left behind when bowlers began to raise their arm — first to waist, then shoulder height — in delivering the ball. This was initially in contravention of the laws that existed at the time. Round-arm bowling (usually delivered from shoulder level) was legalised — many years after it had been widely adopted — in 1835 but bowlers continued to push the rules and raise their arm higher. Once more, the laws were increasingly ignored until they changed in 1864 to allow the bowler to release the ball from whatever height he liked.

The older style became something of a relic, but that did not mean that it disappeared completely. Although lob bowling — the name usually given to what we would term underarm bowling — was a rarity from the 1830s onwards, some cricketers persisted with the method until well into the twentieth century. The aim of the best practitioners was to provoke the batters — through bravado or deception — into attempting big shots and falling to catches in the deep. For a modern audience, it is hard to imagine how lob bowling operated in practice as there are few first-hand accounts of it and no-one today has seen it used seriously. Nevertheless, Scyld Berry and Simon Burnton have suggested some of the threats it may have posed: spin both ways, a high ball aimed directly at the top of the stumps (in a similar manner to the story by Arthur Conan-Doyle, The Story of Spedegue’s Dropper), the grubber, the second-bounce yorker. But as Berry noted: “Under normal conditions it has to be admitted that batsmen get themselves out when faced with lobs which seldom have the technical excellence to beat a defensive stroke.” Yet there were challenges for a batter unaccustomed to facing this relatively rare style in later years: he faced huge potential humiliation at the prospect of getting out to an underarm delivery, even if he was caught in the deep. For anyone who tried to avoid the risk of a big hit, it was not easy to block a lob; one article discussing the best way to play them in a 1900 article in the Westminster Gazette suggested taking singles. The huge difference in trajectory for a batter accustomed to facing overarm bowling was also a factor: from expecting the ball being delivered from above head height, it would suddenly be lobbed up from close to the ground.

The question posed by Berry and Bunton — what had happened to all the lob bowlers — was a familiar one, being frequently asked from the middle years of the nineteenth century. For example, Cecil Headlam wrote an article which pondered this in The Cricketer Annual for 1922–23. He was writing within living memory of first-class lob bowling; the last specialist played county cricket in 1921 and there had been several practitioners before the First World War. Yet it is easy to trace the story, which tells of the decline, surprising revival and ultimate extinction of the lob bowler after the change of the laws in 1835.

The frontispiece from Nyren’s Young Cricketer’s Tutor (published in 1833), showing underarm bowling at Lord’s (Image: The Hambledon Men (1907) via Wikisource)

Although early cricket reports in newspapers often lack detail that is helpful to historians, the scarcity of mentions for “lob” or “underhand” bowling, and the way it is often described as a rarity, shows that very few lob bowlers operated by the mid-19th century in serious cricket. For example, a Bell’s Life report on a local match between Watlington and “The Etonians” in 1840, said that the Etonian batters were “‘rather abroad’ [i. e. confused] at the old-fashioned slow lobbing bowling against which they had to contend.” There were other intermittent reports in the 1840s of “puzzling” or “unusual” lob bowlers baffling various batters. Most of the time, these seem to have been slow bowlers, but occasional faster practitioners are mentioned, such as when the Worcestershire Chronicle reported that “the fast underhand bowling of Mr Barnes was again much admired” in a game between Stow-on-the-Wold and Worcestershire in 1847.

Incidentally, it is extremely implausible that any underarm bowler ever achieved great pace, even if they rolled the ball along the ground. Although a legendary story (told for example by Harry Altham in his History of Cricket) suggests that the underarm bowler George Brown of Brighton, who played between 1819 and 1838, was so quick that one of his deliveries passed through a coat held by a fearful long-stop and killed a passing dog, later writers were skeptical. For example, a correspondent to St James’s Gazette wrote in 1890:

“Veteran cricketers not unfrequently speak of underhand bowling as having equalled, if not exceeded, in pace the fastest roundhand bowling; and, if I remember rightly, this is suggested even in the Badminton cricket book. Allow me to say that, in the first place, this is a physical impossibility; for the underhand bowler’s arm describes a much shorter segment of a circle than does that of a roundhand bowler. In the second place, I feel certain that nineteen practical cricketers out of twenty would laugh at the idea.”

The writer suggested that these “veteran cricketers” had not faced other styles of bowling that would have made a comparison useful; it is hard to argue.

Lob bowlers remained a rarity into the 1850s; one report in the Reading Mercury described how one lob bowler, Mr Phillips, appearing for the village of Newton against neighbouring Woodhay, “did great execution among the timber in the first innings, but in the second it told in the opposite direction.” They were even scarcer in what is now termed as first-class cricket, but one man inspired a minor revival.

William Clarke (Image: Wikipedia)

William Clarke of Nottinghamshire, better known now as the founder of the All-England Eleven, was a lob bowler who had some success. That his style was unusual at the top level is clear from an account in the London Evening Standard of a match at Lord’s between the “MCC and Ground with Pilch” (Fuller Pilch was probably the best batter in England at the time) against the “Northern Counties with A. Mynn, Esq.” in July 1844. When the MCC batted, Clarke took five for 52. The report said:

“The great difficulty the club had to fight against was the underhand slow bowling of Clarke of Nottingham, and that bowling strictly speaking, was only well played by Dorrinton, Sewell, and Hillyer. All the others were ‘stuck up’ by it. Indeed most of them appeared afraid to play in their accustomed free style … But the truth is that nearly all those who played in the club eleven did not understand how to deal with these balls, and for this very good reason, that they have had no practice at its like. The hitting, therefore against Clarke was feeble and tame, except with those whom we have mentioned.”

Opinion was divided on Clarke’s merits as a bowler, as displayed in a frankly strange discussion which played out over several weeks in the correspondence pages of Bell’s Life in 1851 and 1852. Many of the arguments concerned his “All England Eleven”, to which many of the correspondents had serious objections on the grounds of Clarke’s professionalism and his claim to represent “All England”. One letter, written under the pseudonym “A Bowler”, argued that Clarke merely took wickets on account of his reputation, and “if he were to disappear for 50 years, and then came up again when no one knew him, he would be hit ‘to Jericho.'” As it was, batters were inclined to play back and “poke”, thereby getting out, when they should have been attempting to hit.

There are plenty of other indications that even in this early period, underarm bowling was regarded as antiquated. A somewhat smug article in the Berkshire Chronicle in 1854 looked back on some of the larger scores recorded in earlier times and concluded that they were a result of the tame nature of underarm bowling: “Indeed, the underhanded bowling must have afforded great and frequent opportunities of making long and splendid swipes, especially as soon as the eye got accustomed to the bat.” The writer believed that this was how William Ward had been able to score 278 in 1820 — the highest score in what is now recognised as first-class cricket until W. G. Grace scored 344 in 1876. The author noted that at the time he was writing, scores of just fifty or sixty were considered very good, and that round-arm bowling — or as he called it, “bias bowling” — was much faster than that faced in earlier days. Similarly, a syndicated article from 1850 which appeared, among other places, in the Leeds Intelligencer, outlined some large totals which were clearly considered impossible by the 1850s, such as when Hambledon made 403 in 1777, or a game at Lord’s in 1817 when Sussex scored 737 across two innings against the Epsom Club (and William Lambert became the first man to hit a century in each innings).

But Clarke’s success with his old-fashioned style prompted a minor revival, which produced a small number of largely amateur “lobsters”. An article in Sporting Life in 1862 summarised the position: that Clarke had done well largely because his style of bowling had fallen out of fashion, and therefore inspired some imitators:

“At first, Clarke took all the best batsmen in; indeed, it would hardly be believed by any scientific and well-grounded player that, with men in a Kent Eleven, you might see some men puzzled with balls pitched almost to their crease while some men were running in and being bowled with [long hops]. For the first time they had encountered a man with the head to see the weak point in their game, and with the hand to pitch at the very stump, and with the very length that they did not wish to have.”

The writer also suggested that Clarke — and underarm bowlers in general — were able to impart more spin to the ball than their round-arm counterparts, making the ball turn sharply: “We were always of the opinion that the bias of underhand bowling was far more difficult than with round-arm.” For this reason, he wondered if more bowlers should abandon the round-arm style and take up lobs, which he thought would baffle batters, particularly in minor cricket.

V. E. Walker from a photograph published in 1893 (Image: Wikipedia)

But most commentators agreed that lob bowling should have held few terrors at the top level. Once the novelty had worn off for a batter new to the crease, it was far easier to play than round-arm or overarm bowling. Nevertheless, a few bowlers, usually amateurs, experimented with lobs and had occasional success. For example, V. E. Walker, following the example of Clarke, switched to bowling lobs after briefly being a round-arm bowler. He was very successful in this style in 1858 and took 80 first-class wickets in 1859 but faded thereafter with the ball. E. M. Grace (the older brother of W. G.) began his career as a round-arm bowler but switched to lobs, with which he had some success in club cricket; even at the age of 68, he took 119 wickets while playing for Thornbury in 1909. His record at first-class level was less impressive — his 305 wickets between 1862 and 1896 came at an average of 20.37, which was high for the period in which he played — and his Wisden obituary stated that “he did not pretend to be a first-rate bowler”. Both Walker and Grace benefitted from being able to bat, so that their success did not depend on taking wickets. Additionally, both were amateurs, which also allowed them to experiment without fear.

There were other occasional successes. Alfred Lyttleton relinquished his wicket-keeping gloves to take four for 19 with lobs in an 1884 Test match against Australia. And although in 1888, the Badminton Library book about cricket stated that lob bowling had “disappeared forever” from first-class cricket, that was not quite true.

One of the best of the later lob bowlers was Walter Humphreys, a professional for Sussex, who was born at Southsea in 1849. He first appeared for the county in 1871, but only played intermittently at first-class level for ten years; furthermore, in 36 matches before the 1880 season, he bowled just 40 deliveries. Humphreys’ obituary in Wisden stated that, in this period, he was “a fairly good young cricketer with no special qualifications. He could bat and field and, in an emergency, keep wicket.” Some accounts suggested that he initially bowled medium-paced round-arm, but he himself claimed always to have bowled lobs.

Walter Humphreys, from a photograph published in 1897 (Image: Wikipedia)

Having not played at all in 1879, Humphreys finally unveiled his lob bowling in 1880. He took only 17 wickets in total, but had some spectacular success when Sussex played the Australians at the end of the season: he took five for 32, including a hat-trick. Even with this performance, he did not play regularly for his county until 1882. His bowling was moderately successful, but he was played for his batting as much as anything: he averaged around 20 with the bat in most seasons, more than respectable for the period. With the ball, he remained a novelty. But the Australian teams of the period found his bowling a huge challenge: he took another hat-trick against them in 1884 (the only season in that decade in which he took more than fifty first-class wickets), and when Sussex defeated the 1888 Australians, he had match figures of nine for 40. In Humphreys’ Wisden obituary, the editor Sydney Pardon wrote: “To the fast-footed Australian batsmen of those days, Humphreys caused so much trouble that I have often wondered whether, at some sacrifice to the team in run-getting power, it would not have been wise in 1884 to play him for England at the Oval.”

From 1890, Humphreys’ batting began to decline — he averaged 12.44 in 1890, a considerable fall, and less than ten in each season from 1892 to 1894 — but his bowling reached new heights. In 1891, he took 70 wickets, followed by 74 in 1892 and an almost unbelievable 150 in 1893 — of which 122 were for Sussex, the first time a bowler had taken a hundred wickets in a season for the county. As Sydney Pardon said in Humphreys’ obituary of his overall record in 1893: “As he played so much of his cricket at Brighton, with easy boundaries on the Pavilion side of the ground, these were remarkable figures.”

Humphreys’ success prompted the old Harrow cricketer William Kington to write to the Rev R. S. Holmes, a letter published in Cricket in September 1893; he suggested that few batters knew how to play lobs but that such bowlers were badly used by captains. Kington suggested that lob bowlers should be used at the beginning of an innings before a batter had settled, and taken off immediately if they began to be hit. Kington attributed Humphreys’ success not to an improvement in his bowling but in having a captain who knew the best way to use lobs; the Sussex captain at the time was the Australian former Test player Billy Murdoch. The latter had scored 286 not out for the Australians against Sussex in 1882, but later said of Humphreys: “Even when I had made 200 runs I could not tell from watching his hand which way he meant to turn the ball.”

Humphreys success inspired another of the periodic minor revivals of lob bowling; J. B. Woods played for Oxford University between 1891 and 1893 and took 53 first-class wickets at 26.39 with lobs, generally opening the bowling. But Woods’ figures also reveal the biggest weakness of this style: he conceded 4.09 runs per six balls (overs at the time consisted of five deliveries). And while he picked up wickets, he could also be very expensive, such as when he returned two for 127 from 19 overs against the MCC in 1893. And even Humphreys gave away runs. In 1893, he bowled the equivalent of 674 six-ball overs and conceded 2,598 runs, which would have given an economy rate (had anyone cared about such things in 1893) of 3.85. It was a similar story in other seasons, making Humphreys, for all his success, a high-risk option if the batters got on top of him. For example, against Kent at Hove in 1893 his figures were five for 152 from 40 first-innings overs (although he took six for 67 from 25 overs in the second innings).

Walter Humphries bowling lobs against Victoria at the Melbourne Cricket Ground during the tour of Australia by A. E. Stoddart’s team in 1894–95 (Image: The First Great Test Series (1994) by David Frith)

Although Humphreys was less successful in 1894, memories of what he had achieved, particularly against Australian batters, prompted A. E. Stoddart to take him to Australia as part of his team in 1894–95. The experiment was a failure. Although Humphreys, who turned 45 during the tour, baffled a succession of batters in minor matches against “country” sides (including ten for 52 against a New England XXII, ten for 51 against a Ballarat XVIII and nine for 48 against a Toowoomba XVIII), he played only four first-class matches (and none of the Tests), taking six wickets at 52.33. David Frith, in The First Great Test Series (1994), his book on the tour, described how observers of the team’s first practices did not think Humphreys would present a threat, and how the crowd laughed when he first came on to bowl against South Australia (although he took a wicket with his second ball). Even if spectators were intrigued, Humphreys’ ineffectiveness left Stoddart with huge selection problems: he had only taken thirteen players, two of whom were wicket-keepers, meaning that he had to keep the same team playing almost throughout, particularly in the Test series.

After a poor season in 1895, Humphreys retired in 1896, apart from a one-off appearance for Hampshire in 1900. Away from cricket, he worked as a bootmaker (as his father had been) who also made cricket balls and footballs; this was always the occupation he gave on the census. He married Mary Ann Roberts in 1870 and the couple had six children. When he died in 1924, Humphreys left an estate worth £4,810 (worth around £280,000 today). Incidentally, his son (also called Walter) played for Sussex between 1898 and 1900; he too was a lob bowler.

Occasional lob bowlers continued to operate in county cricket — including Digby Jephson who played for Cambridge and Surrey (captaining the county in 1901 and 1902), taking healthy numbers of wickets after discarding his overarm style. In 1899, he took six for 21 for the Gentlemen against the Players at Lord’s. But the last bowler to have any impact in any meaningful sense was the only specialist underarm bowler to have any notable success at Test level.

George Simpson-Hayward (Image: The Tatler, 4 May 1910)

George Simpson-Hayward was an amateur who played briefly for Cambridge University and then Worcestershire, captaining the latter in 1911 and 1912. For much of this time, he was a mediocre batter who bowled occasionally and it was not until he began to play regularly for Worcestershire from 1908 that he began to be successful. A maiden first-class century and 68 wickets in 1908 was followed by 57 wickets in 1909. As a man very much in the mould of the old-fashioned amateur, he had already been on several tours, including an MCC tour of New Zealand in 1906–07. So his selection to tour South Africa in 1909–10 was perhaps not a shock, given the generally low-key nature of tours to that country. The team was far from representative, and only Jack Hobbs, Wilfred Rhodes and Colin Blythe would at that time have been first-choice selections in a full-strength England team. But on the matting pitches used in South African first-class cricket, Simpson-Hayward was able to make the ball turn enormously. His Wisden obituary summarised what happened: “Going to South Africa with Mr. H. D. G. Leveson Gower’s team in 1909, he took 23 wickets at 18.26 runs each in the five Tests, and in the first at Johannesburg his first innings analysis was 6 for 43. The matting wickets just suited his exceptional power of spinning the ball.” Pelham Warner wrote how “the crowd roared with laughter when he first went on”, but his bowling soon lost its humour for them.

Simpson-Hayward was not a typical lob bowler; his Wisden obituary said: “He seldom flighted the ball like the ordinary lob bowler and did not often use spin from leg. In fact he was quite unusual with the speed at which he could make the ball, delivered with low trajectory, break from the off.” And in the first Test, he may have been helped, as one correspondent to Cricket suggested, by the remnants of a banked cycle track surrounding the Johannesburg ground; there was around three feet of red soil at the bottom of the sight-screens. As Simpson-Hayward delivered the ball from very low, it is possible that batters lost sight of it against this background. But even at the time, there was the impression that this was a one-off success. The problem — which is in many ways a perfect metaphor for English cricket — was that while he was taking wickets with a bowling style which had been all-but obsolete for nearly a century, the South African bowlers brought the English batting to its knees with the newly-invented googly. The home side won three of the first four Tests to take the series.

Despite his relative triumph, and his good returns in county cricket, Simpson-Hayward made little impression on the cricket establishment. Never featured in a profile in Cricket, he passed largely unnoticed. Like those before him who took up lob bowling, he owed most of his success to novelty, but even here he was unfavourably compared to Jephson in many quarters. He continued to play for Worcestershire until 1914 without distinguishing himself. He played regularly in 1911 and 1912 but his bowling was less effective, and he only appeared intermittently in 1913 and 1914.

Simpson-Hayward was also a good full-back, receiving a football blue at Cambridge (he was never a cricket blue). And, like many amateurs of the period, he was perhaps more interesting away from sport. He was born George Hayward Thomas Simpson in 1875, the son of a wealthy farmer (whose lands covered 430 acres and employed twelve men and three boys, according to the 1871 census), but changed his name in 1898 to George Hayward Thomas Simpson-Hayward for no obvious reason (Hayward was the maiden name of his maternal grandmother). He married Mary Stenson in 1911 and they had one daughter. From 1916, he served in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. Most of his time was taken up with affairs in his village, Icomb; he served on the parish council and was a church warden for a time. He played local cricket for Stow-on-the-Wold and Bourton-on-the-Water and was a lepidopterist with a large collection of butterflies. He left an estate worth just over £15,000 when he died in 1936 (worth around £1 million today).

Meanwhile, lob bowlers struggled on until the First World War. There were various features in newspapers which questioned why the method was not used more, given than it had brought some success to men like Humphreys and Simpson-Hayward. But there was never any sense that it was going to make a comeback. The last gasp came in 1921, when Surrey’s innovative captain Percy Fender selected an underarm bowler for a handful of matches. Trevor Molony was a schoolboy cricketer at Repton who took just one wicket for its team, and failed to reach the Cambridge eleven as a freshman in 1920. But Fender gambled on him after he dismissed Jack Hobbs in an early-season trial game (Hobbs was stumped attempting to hit a fourth four off the bowler). Molony made his first-class debut against Nottinghamshire, but Fender did not bring him on until the score was 170 for five. He bowled leg theory, with just one fielder on the off-side, and with four men on the leg-side boundary. Bowling deliberate full-tosses, he presented unaccustomed difficulties to the batters, who tied themselves in knots, and he took three for 11 in seven overs — two caught on the boundary and a third, W. W. Whysall, attempting an overhead smash at a full toss which only went as far as mid-off. The crowd found the struggles of the batters amusing. But Molony played just twice more, and barely bowled, drifting out of first-class cricket, although he continued to play club cricket for the Incogniti and Repton Pilgrims. Fender later recalled that his wicket-keeper, Herbert Strudwick, had told him: “It’s him or me — if you go on playing him, I’m off.”

The bowling of Molony seems to have been a long way removed from the earlier endeavours of bowlers such as Clarke or Humphreys. Although it was common for lob bowlers to aim for catches in the deep, they also attempted spin and deception, rather than simply bowling full tosses. Perhaps the art had been finally lost. Certainly it appears that no full-time lob bowler appeared in first class cricket in England after Molony. Others used the underarm style occasionally: J. C. Clay of Glamorgan took a wicket with a lob in 1933, as did Jack Iverson in India during a tour of India in 1953–54; Hedley Verity bowled underarm against Surrey as a protest at a delayed declaration in 1933 (and was no-balled because he had not informed the umpire he was switching method); and of course there was the Trevor Chappell incident.

The current laws of cricket do not permit underarm bowling except by prior agreement between the captains; this means that it is effectively outlawed in first-class cricket. But even before this change was put into operation, no one was tempted to return to the old ways except for those one-offs.

Note: After this was published, Rameses on Twitter pointed out two articles from the Manchester Guardian (and there is a similar report in the Birmingham Daily Gazette, but curiously no mention of this in The Times or even in Wisden) that in June 1920, Vallance Jupp and Jack Mercer took all ten wickets between them for Sussex against Worcestershire bowling lobs. The report might indicate that only Mercer was using the underarm style, but it seems extraordinary that — if one or both men really had taken so many wickets with lobs — no-one else picked up on this, at the time or later.

There was an extraordinary incident in 1920 when Jack Mercer and Vallance Jupp bowled out Worcs for 85 bowling underarm.

Hat-tip – @statseditor & @JohnWar79031335 pic.twitter.com/ay4uc5YZ8j

— Rameses (@tintin1107) January 5, 2022

“Refined Lady Athletes, not Burlesque Masqueraders”: The muddled creation of the “Original English Lady Cricketers”

The photograph of the “Reds” team of the Original English Lady Cricketers, printed in Lillywhite’s Cricket Annual in March 1890 (Image: Wikipedia)

Except that the 1890 cricket season marked the beginning of the official County Championship, and featured a low-key Test series between England and Australia, little from that year has been marked for posterity. But forgotten by all except academic historians, the cricket which received the most attention that season involved a group of professional women who toured Britain playing exhibition matches. The “Original English Lady Cricketers” divided opinion, generated an enormous number of column inches, achieved what was grudgingly admitted to be a reasonable standard and caused tens — perhaps hundreds — of thousands of paying spectators to flock to their games. Considering that this took place 124 years before the ECB introduced contracts for women, it has generally been recognised as extraordinary that a venture involving professional women’s cricket was successfully attempted in 1890. However, even at a time when everyone was talking about the “lady cricketers”, the focus was rarely on the standard of play, or the state of the match; they were more interested in the appearance of the players. Which, for the somewhat unscrupulous organisers of the tour, was perhaps the point of the Original English Lady Cricketers.

The story of the Original English Lady Cricketers (or the OELC, as the team referred to themselves) is relatively well-studied in the field of the history of women’s sport. References to the OELC in academic works are quite common, and the team is often set into the context of the evolution of women’s cricket. But outside the academic sphere, the OELC is not widely known. The most comprehensive account appears in a PhD thesis by Judy Threlfall-Sykes submitted in 2015. But the history and dynamics of the team itself has never been studied closely. This is unfortunate, because even setting aside how remarkable the idea of a professional women’s team was for 1890, the story features an improbable series of events and a cast of larger-than-life characters — which given the theatrical aspirations of many of the participants may be appropriate.

However, the OELC were not operating in a vacuum. As related in Isabelle Duncan’s Skirting the Boundary (2013), women’s cricket first became popular in pre-Victorian times. There were even occasional elements of pseudo-professionalism; Keith Sandiford in Cricket and the Victorians (1994) and Judy Threlfall-Sykes in her thesis identify several matches between the 1790s and 1835 which were played for prize money or involved collections among the crowd. However, the lack of leisure time for most women following the Industrial Revolution meant that access to the game became restricted to the upper classes. By 1838, women’s cricket had effectively fizzled out, and Victorian moralists — arguing that women should not waste their time playing a potentially harmful sport — suppressed any possibility of a revival. However, women could not be entirely excluded. A probably apocryphal tale describes how overarm bowling was invented by Christine Willes, the sister of John Willes who became one of the pioneering “round-arm” bowlers. According to the story, she found the prevailing underarm style impossible owing to the width of her skirt. Probably more rooted in reality was the influence of Martha Pocock, the mother of W. G. Grace, who supposedly coached him from a young age.

Illustration of Harrow versus Pinner, Daily Graphic 18 August 1888 (Image: British Newspaper Archive)

For most women in the Victorian period, cricket was something to be watched rather than played. The first glimmer of progress came in schools. The education available to girls was rooted in the notion that a woman’s place was at home; therefore it bore no relation to the equivalent experience for boys which had a heavy emphasis on sport. For many years, physical education played little part in girls’ curricula because the men who drew them up believed women were too weak and fragile, less robust both physically and intellectually than men, for such activities. This attitude gradually changed from the 1880s onwards, and physical education and fitness began to assume greater importance in the minds of educators. From there, the introduction of team games into girls’ schools was the next step, and cricket, having the reputation of introducing a strong moral sense in its participants, was an obvious choice. But in contrast to boys’ schools, any competitive element was discouraged, and there was an ever-present concern that cricket could be “de-feminising”. Even so, there were occasional matches between girls’ schools and the sport proved popular.

The expectation was that, upon leaving school, girls would stop playing cricket. However, the number of women’s clubs steadily grew throughout the 1880s. The earliest newspaper reports of these clubs come from 1883, but some may have been in existence before that. The most famous example, founded in 1887, was the White Feather Club which included several upper-class members including Lucy Risdale who later married the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. By 1890, women’s cricket was an increasingly familiar concept. Although opinion in the male-dominated press was divided on this phenomenon, many commentators believed that if woman were going to play sport, cricket was probably the best option.

Unsurprisingly, some people saw this as a business opportunity. And this is what led to the formation of the Original English Lady Cricketers. The concept was a simple one: a team of women would tour the country and play matches. Professional touring teams were not a new idea. One of the biggest factors in the growth of cricket in England in the mid-1800s was the success of William Clarke’s All-England Eleven, a team of professional cricketers who toured the country playing local sides. The success of Clarke’s team spawned several imitators until the increasing popularity of county cricket snuffed them all out in the 1880s. But there is no doubt that, in their early days, these teams were successful, popular and — perhaps most importantly — profitable.

However, it is unlikely that Clarke’s team provided the inspiration for the OELC. Partly, this is clear through the format of the tour, which offered far more than just cricket and seemed to be influenced by theatrical entertainment such as vaudeville and burlesque (of the Victorian English type) and possibly even the concept of cricket as staged entertainment such as “clown cricket” which was briefly popular in the 1870s. But the main evidence that the concept was not inspired by Clarke is that the man behind the OELC was unfamiliar with cricket.

As the team became established in mid-1890, several newspapers spoke to the creator of the OELC, a man called Edward Michel. He told a straightforward story about himself. For example, in July an interview was printed in the Leigh Chronicle which revealed that his parents were French but he had been educated in America. He openly stated that he was not a cricketer. The reports were somewhat vague on who Michel actually was; the writers give the impression that he was some kind of original thinker but say little about him other than he was “around 40” and was a “dark-complexioned, good-looking, knowing sort of gentleman”.

Edward Michel photographed in 1890
(Image: National Archives via Fair Play: The Story of Women’s Cricket by Rachel Heyhoe Flint and Netta Rheinberg)

The only realistic candidate who can be identified living in England at this time was Louis Edward Michel (who sometimes spelled his middle name as Edouard). He born in France around 1839 and worked in London as a railway manager. The 1891 census records him living with his wife Grace, his six-year-old son George Edward and two servants. As there is no record of Michel before his marriage to Grace in 1883, he presumably arrived in England around then. And sometime around 1889, Michel somehow conceived of the idea of a team of women cricketers travelling the country to make him wealthy. But it is quite likely that the idea of serious cricket was quite a late addition to his concept, and that the tour as it transpired was far-removed from what he had in mind.

Michel’s first definite action seems to have come in October 1889 when he formed “The English Cricket and Athletic Association” (ECAA), which he registered as a limited liability company. The evolution of his idea can then be traced quite easily. In January 1890, a series of advertisements began to appear in newspapers throughout the country including one in the Daily Telegraph:

“Lawn Tennis: Lady Players Wanted for select exhibition matches. Training and costumes free. Small salary and all expenses. No premium. Applicants must be of good address and appearance, respectable. strong, active, not under 5ft 6in in height, over 22 years old. Long series — Address fully (letter only), etc. Parents and guardians invited to communicate.”

Because many readers thought the advert was a joke, a clarifying letter appeared which stated:

“The vacancies occur in the above troupe (the Original English Lady Cricketers), the members of which will also study lawn-tennis, Swedish drill, etc, for the purposes of playing public matches from Easter to October. Tennis tuition and match costumes free. Members find hose, gloves, etc. Salary 10s [shillings] per week during training or practice, and from £1 to 30s during the time of public matches. Travelling expenses paid the whole time.”

The letter added that there would be six-and-a-half hours of practice each day, anyone under the age of 21 needed the “consent of their parents or guardians”, and that “references as to character, etc, are also required.” A syndicated article that appeared in several newspapers observed: “The managers of this extraordinary venture may possibly intend to add another to the many novelty shows on view in this country, but it is to be hoped that they will not succeed. It is not altogether pleasant to see feminine acrobats, but exhibitions by professional female cricketers and lawn-tennis players will be positively painful.”

While it is not entirely clear what Michel hoped to achieve, cricket was but a small part of his initial concept. However, he needed money to finance the operation, and it appears to have been one of his backers who insisted on a change of direction away from what could have been somewhat disreputable by late-Victorian standards. He enlisted the help of Walter Henry Bosanquet, a 51-year-old London solicitor, to put together a syndicate to finance the operation. Bosanquet was in fact the first cousin once removed of Bernard Bosanquet, the inventor of the googly: Walter’s father was the brother of Bernard’s grandfather’s.

In a letter to the Bromley and District Times published in May 1890, Walter Bosanquet tried to explain what lay behind the venture, and to address some criticisms. He began by pointing out that there was a growing demand for cricket played by the “weaker sex” and that, as games between men and women (for example with the men using their “wrong” hand to make it competitive) were unsatisfactory, he saw an opportunity to promote women playing amongst themselves. Therefore, “I readily agreed to take a leading part in the formation and management of the English Cricket and Athletic Association, which intends for the present, at all events, to confine itself to the promotion of cricket and other athletic exercises among women.” He had insisted before getting involved that everything should be “respectable” and that the cricket should be “as real and as good as can be”. He expressed optimism that the games would be popular, successful and serve to convince critics that women’s cricket was viable.

Bosanquet’s insistence that the cricket should be “as real and good as can be” seems to have forced a change in Michel’s publicity campaign. Cricket assumed a much greater focus, and the operation began to look less like a novelty act. According to a report in the South Wales Echo in February 1890, the ECAA was formed “for the purpose of instructing ladies in ‘cricket’s manly toil’, and that at the present time G. G. Hearne and Maurice Read are superintending the training of these Amazons at St. George’s Hall, Wandsworth.” Hearne and Read were professionals at Kent and Surrey respectively, indicating that cricket had become the primary sport in which the recruits were being trained. Somewhat strangely, the article states that the group were “open to accept engagements for cricket, flat racing, Roman sports, &c”, which suggests that Michel was still thinking in terms of a kind of variety show rather than serious cricket, but the tone continued to shift as the cricket season approached.

Advertisement for the OELC in The Era, 15 March 1890

The women were primarily coached by William Matthews — described in some articles as a Surrey professional, although he never appears to have played for the county, in others as a “well-known” school coach and in some as the professional at Kingston Town — and Charles Billet, “under the supervision” of Hearne, Read and “other leading players”. George Hearne’s brother Alec may also have been involved, as well as Fred Bowley of Worcestershire. Some accounts suggested that the women had surprised the Surrey and England cricketers Bobby Abel and George Lohmann with their ability; others added Lohmann to the list of coaches. Confusion may have arisen because S. B. Lohmann, George’s brother, was briefly a coach alongside Matthews. Alternatively, it may have been another attempt by Michel to add some respectability and grandeur to his promotion.

Even with the increased focus on quality, it was clear that Michel’s plans involved more than mere cricket. As well as a daytime game, the OELC would also provide a show in the evening in which the women would demonstrate other skills. An advert in March 1890 listed some of the entertainment provided: “Elaborate Pictorials, Blocks and Lithos, by Hill-Siffken, David Allen, Hal Berte, Phillips, &c. Magnificent and expensive Wardrobe, Photos, and Properties. Complete Day Show. Assault-at-arms at Night. Cricket, Crocketta, Bicycling, Fencing, Boxing, and Drill. Refined Lady Athletes, not Burlesque Masqueraders.” For details, the manager of the ECAA could be contacted at 13 Chesterfield Grove in London. An “agent for the north”, F. W. Walden, could also be contacted at 13 Parker Street in Liverpool.

As the cricket season came closer, Michel again simplified his ideas. An advert in April 1890 made no mention of any attraction apart from cricket, although it carried the line “refined sport, not burlesque”, a theme that continued in the team’s publicity all season. The advert, seeking fixtures, gave several contacts: in Liverpool (Mr F. W. Walden), Edinburgh (Mr Moss, whose address was “Varieties”, presumably a theatre), the Midlands (Messrs Wilder’s of 29 Great Francis Street) and Plymouth (Mr T Martin of the Bath Hotel). The manager’s address was given as 13 Chesterfield Grove in London. Incidentally, both the 1881 and 1891 censuses list that as a vacant property. A later advert gave the address of the ECAA as 11 Queen Victoria Street in London. This was Mansion House Chambers, a building containing the rented offices of barristers and solicitors; perhaps it had some connection with Bosanquet.

It is also interesting that several advertisements, looking to fill vacant dates, appeared in The Era, a weekly newspaper devoted to theatre. Other ads appeared in The Stage, and a feature in that newspaper in April said that “Mr F. W. Walden and Mr Harry Montague, both well-known gentlemen in the theatrical world, are piloting them through.”

What can we conclude from all this? Almost certainly that Michel’s original plan was for a grand spectacle that featured cricket as just one aspect, and was to be as much a theatrical as a sporting occasion, as evidenced by the association of several theatre owners and men from that world. Clearly the writers for The Era and The Stage shared that view. Despite his insistence that this was “not burlesque”, it is quite likely that there was a distinct “burlesque” spin on his idea — for most of the year, the cricketers also performed musical numbers and costume was a large part of their identity. That the costumes were revealing by Victorian standards and that all press reports commented favourably on the attractiveness of the OELC members might also be indicative that there was an exploitative element to Michel’s plan. The appeal was to be the women themselves rather than a demonstration of sporting prowess. Its transformation into something else — a genuine cricketing tour which drew in many women spectators — grew organically out of the early games (and possibly Bosanquet’s restraining influence), and was largely out of Michel’s hands. As the year progressed, the novelty parts of the tour were gradually reduced and whatever reservations journalists may have had, everyone recognised that this was a genuine cricket team.

Yet when the recruitment adverts first appeared, and when the first women joined the ECAA, the intention was considerably different from the eventual reality, which would have had a huge bearing on who might have signed a contract. As the first adverts appear to have been published from January 1890, it is likely that women applied between January and March. The Liverpool Mercury in April said that training had begun in September, but this was most likely an exaggeration to the press by Michel as he had not registered the company by that date, nor published any adverts. A report in the London Evening Standard in May explained how the women had been recruited: “A nucleus of girls having some previous knowledge of cricket, and a large number of others, were tried by professional cricketers, and the most promising were chosen, and for months kept in constant practice.” The South Wales Echo suggested that the players — or their parents — had entered into two-year agreements. The Isle of Man Times, when the team visited Douglas in July, reported that over £2,000 (equivalent to over £200,000 today) had been spent on training and other expenses in the lead up to the tour — part of which presumably involved hiring grounds and venues. At this stage, the players were anonymous but, as we shall see, their personalities gradually emerged over the course of the season.

We have one surviving account from a player about how she came to join. Mary Willett — who played under the pseudonym Marie Beckenham — spoke to Netta Rheinberg in 1956. The latter wrote in Fair Play: The Story of Women’s Cricket (1976):

“A friend showed [Willett] an advertisement in the press offering a professional engagement to women interested in cricket and they both decided to apply. She had played the game as a youngster and was very good at fielding; Mary Willett was accepted but her friend rejected. She signed on and was instructed to attend practices one day a week indoors on matting in a hall at Wandsworth, or outdoors on a cricket pitch at Balham … Her parents did not react unfavourably to their daughter becoming a professional cricketer. Her father was interested and was reassured by the fact that a ‘matron’ accompanied the teams wherever they went. When they played at the Crystal Palace he actually brought a party of twenty-two people to watch.”

But not everyone was as approving as Willett’s father. An example of the attitude with which most of the cricket world viewed the idea of a professional women’s team can be seen in the reaction of Leighton Buzzard Cricket Club. In March, Michel had written asking for permission to hire the club’s ground at a cost of £3 3s for a match scheduled in May. The committee of the cricket club voted in favour — by four votes to two — in early March only for the lessee of the ground, Mr G. L. B. Calcott, to protest that the committee had overreached their authority. Several members were also unhappy, so a meeting was called to discuss the issue, and among the issues raised were that the women had been practising “in a barn” and unhappiness that the ground was being used for what was “but a commercial speculation” which would not benefit the club. However, others saw the benefit to the locality of attracting spectators to such an unusual event, and the members voted in favour of allowing the women to use the ground. Calcott would not, however, be moved and refused to even discuss the matter. After much discussion, the proposal fell through. Instead, Michel arranged for the women to play at the nearby Linslade Cricket Club.

Others were less concerned about the commercial side, and Michel certainly had no trouble in finding grounds to host his team. For example, the quaintly named Yarmouth Amusement Committee granted use of the town’s recreation ground at a meeting after Michel wrote a request in April.

Undated poster advertising the OELC (Image: zoetakingthefield)

Whatever Michel’s motivation, and whatever his original intentions for his tour, he evidently had a talent for publicity. Advertisements appeared in newspapers in England, Scotland, Wales and even the Isle of Man. After the first match had been played, subsequent adverts incorporated newspaper reviews of the event. He also organised other publicity opportunities. At the annual Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race on 26 March, a steam yacht was seen progressing up and down the river with the team on board in colourful outfits — which at least one journalist took to signify their support for Cambridge — accompanied by their relatively famous coaches Hearne and Read. The press obligingly picked up on this, and reported the presence of the “lady cricketers”, although most writers did not realise who or what they were. Perhaps Michel’s greatest coup was having a photograph of the team as the frontispiece of Lillywhite’s Cricket Annual, which came out in March. There was also an advert which stated:

“With the object of proving the suitability of the national game as a pastime for the fair sex in preference to Lawn Tennis and other less scientific games, The English Cricket and Athletic Association Limited have organised Two Complete Xls of Female Players under the title of THE ORIGINAL ENGLISH LADY CRICKETERS. Trained by W. Matthews, S. B. Lohman and qualified assistants. Elegantly and appropriately attired. N.B. Every effort is made to keep this organisation in every respect select and refined. A matron accompanies each eleven to all engagements. Private engagements of one or both elevens can be arranged for a complete match or to meet lady amateurs.”

That Michel was so disparaging of tennis seems a little hypocritical considering his original plans and the first advertisements that appeared. The annual was cautiously favourable to the idea of women’s cricket, particularly as the author considered it a fairly suitable sport for women.

Similar previews appeared that month, which revealed that the OELC would be comprised of two teams, the “Reds” and “Blues” who would compete against each other, but that they hoped to meet teams of other “lady cricketers”. It was made clear that they had no intention of facing men’s teams. And there was certainly a great deal of curiosity in the press about what the ladies cricket teams would be like, although most writers seemed to be ignorant of the amount of women’s cricket already being played at an amateur level, or the prevalence of women’s cricket in earlier years. Only the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News wryly commented that to name the team the Original Lady Cricketers “is to credit them with extreme old age for in the last century eleven married ladies played against eleven single ones, and various matches have been arranged since.”

Therefore, by April, many people were aware of the OELC and anticipation was growing. And when the players made their debut in Liverpool, many thousands turned out to watch. The positive reaction of the spectators, and that of the many journalists who attended, set in motion what by almost any measure turned out to be a very successful summer…

“Quite unique in the cricket world”: Bob Thoms, the first great umpire

Robert Thoms (Image: Cricket 18 June 1903)

The best umpires are generally the quieter, low-profile characters. Few have achieved fame, although some men like Jim Phillips could make waves through their desire for the limelight. Probably the first umpire to become well-known purely through his excellence in the role was Bob Thoms, who had an astonishingly long career in the second half of the nineteenth century. He umpired the first Test match on English soil, and was universally well-liked; the tributes were widespread and affectionate when he died in 1903. His personality shines through the many stories that attached themselves to him so that even today we can get a sense of what he was like. More importantly, Thoms umpired at a time when the role changed into one which would be recognised today. His life and career spanned a hugely important period in the development of cricket into an international sport.

Robert Arthur Thoms was born on 19 May 1826, Lord’s Cricket Ground had only occupied its present site for twelve years; cricket was barely played anywhere in the world except England and there were huge swathes of the country where it was not popular; international contests were unheard of and would probably have brought ridicule on anyone who suggested them. There were few, if any, cricketing stars. The future Queen Victoria was six years old. Thoms outlived her by two years; when he died, cricket was played across the world, Test matches were well-established and the sport had assumed much of its modern form.

Thoms was born in Marylebone, at a house on Lisson Grove extremely close to Lord’s. His father was a baker, into which occupation Thoms initially followed. He received a high standard of education at Willesden School; according to his obituary in Cricket, he knew Latin and Greek, although he “never paraded his knowledge”. More importantly for his cricket career, his father was an acquaintance of James Henry Dark who owned Lord’s (the MCC did not take control of the ground until 1866). When Thoms was fifteen, Dark called on his father one day to ask to borrow some weights to bolster his heavy roller for the cricket ground. Thoms accompanied Dark back to Lord’s, and after being given a new bat and ball, he was asked to entertain Dark’s young nephews while he worked. This was his route into cricket, although he continued to work as a baker.

The following year, 1841, Thoms joined St John’s Wood Cricket Club at the age of sixteen. In 1844, he played at Lord’s for the first time, appearing for St John’s Wood against the MCC. Over the following few years, he began to establish himself as one of the best batsmen in the London area, and also impressed with his fielding. There were also developments in his personal life; in July 1849, he married Elizabeth Constance Farley, who initially moved in with his family. The couple had four children in total, two daughters and two sons; but neither boy lived until their second birthday.

Twelve months later, he made his breakthrough when, playing for XIV of Middlesex against the MCC, he top-scored with an unbeaten 43 against a very strong attack. At the time, scores were usually very low in comparison to today and such an innings stood out, particularly given that the bowlers included some of the leading bowlers in the world: Frederick Lillywhite, William Clarke, William Hillier and John Wisden — the latter being the man who founded the almanack which still bears his name. After this success, he was chosen the following month to play for the “Young” against the “Old of England” (recorded in modern sources as Over 36 v Under 36), a match which was retrospectively identified as his first-class debut. Despite making scores of just 0 and 17 in a narrow win for his team, his batting and fielding impressed several judges.

Other cricketers in that game were legendary, albeit forgotten today. The two teams included George Parr, Alfred Mynn, Fuller Pilch, Thomas Box and Nicholas Felix, men recalled with awe into the next century, and it is an indication of the length and distinguished nature of Thoms’ career that when he stepped from a first-class cricket field for the last time in 1900, the players in that match included W. G. Grace, C. B. Fry, Ranjitsinhji, George Hirst, Andrew Stoddart and Wilfred Rhodes. The last named played his final games in 1930; the span between the beginning of Fuller Pilch’s career in big cricket and the end of that of Rhodes encompasses 110 years.

So impressed was William Clarke with Thoms’ play that he invited him to join his All-England XI, a team of professionals that travelled throughout the country competing against local sides and which was hugely influential in the development of English cricket. Thoms agreed and turned professional before the 1851 season, having previously played as an amateur. He played the only other two first-class games of his career early in that season. However, Thoms never found form with the bat for Clarke’s team. Having decided that it wasn’t working, he returned to London. While continuing to work as a baker (the 1861 census records that as his occupation), he joined Dark as an assistant in managing Lord’s.

This was only a temporary position; Thoms appreciated that there were an increasing number of good cricketers in the London region, which offered him opportunities. With his friend Humphrey Payne, he purchased a cricket ground, the Eton and Middlesex Ground (his 1903 obituary in Cricket suggested that his father had been a part-owner of the ground, but an 1883 article made no such connection). Cricket flourished there for nearly twenty years before the ground was purchased and built over by developers. Through his association with this ground, where many actors played, Thoms became interested in the stage and was able to recite many of Shakespeare’s plays by heart. Although there are few details of what else he did away from the cricket field, his Wisden obituary recorded: “Thoms was a good all-round sportsman, taking as a young man a keen delight in foot racing and the prize ring. He was a good runner himself, and could, so it is said, do a hundred yards in ten-and-a-half seconds.”

Thoms in the mid-1880s (Image: Cricket 24 December 1885)

But Thoms’ cricketing life soon became dominated by a different venture. In 1863, a group of leading amateur players from the increasingly popular London cricketing scene began the formation of Middlesex County Cricket Club, which officially came into existence in February 1864. In the informal and somewhat chaotic county cricket played at the time — with no organised competition between the growing number of embryonic county sides there was no governing body and few rules — teams had to provide their own umpire for matches. Therefore, the newly-formed Middlesex employed Thoms to do the job, a position he held for seventeen years.

Although he had little prior experience in the role, he quickly proved to be an excellent umpire and was soon in demand for other clubs. His first big game was the Surrey v “England” match in 1865, and he umpired several North v South matches. However, he never took charge of a Gentlemen v Players match at Lord’s, the biggest fixture each season in a time long before Test matches were even thought of; the MCC generally used their own groundstaff to umpire these games.

Thoms umpired 24 of the 34 first-class matches played by Middlesex in the 1860s, but was hardly overworked as a first-class umpire and was more likely to be found standing in friendly matches between amateur teams, or in fixtures between leading public schools. Nor are all his games to be found on CricketArchive. An 1885 feature in Cricket suggests that he umpired over a hundred games featuring the Islington Albion club, and was a regular umpire in its first years for the peripatetic Incogniti. But Middlesex were grateful enough for his services to give him a benefit match in 1878, which was very well supported.

There was one other interesting feature of this part of Thoms’ career — the birth of international cricket. In 1878, the first fully representative Australian team visited England, although no Test matches were played. Thoms umpired their game against Middlesex, but greater distinction came his way two years later. Towards the end of the 1880 season, another Australian side faced a team representing England in what would later be recognised as the first Test match played in England. Thoms — to his lasting pride — was appointed as one of the umpires.

The Australians certainly respected his umpiring, and when the third Australian team to visit England arrived in 1882, he stood in two of their early games. But it cannot be said that the Australians were happy with the general standard of English umpiring during the tour. When they were unexpectedly defeated by the Players of England, there were grumbles about biased decisions; similarly when they lost to a Cambridge Past and Present team, George Bonner and the Australian captain Billy Murdoch openly challenged one of the umpires.

The climax of the tour was a fixture — already being described as a “Test match” — against England and Thoms was again asked to umpire. This was the game that Australia sensationally won by seven runs, leading to the newspaper announcement about the death of English cricket that established the concept of “The Ashes”. Thoms’ 1903 obituary in Cricket recorded that when he removed the bails at the conclusion of the match, he said: “The balls are over, gentlemen. The very best cricket I ever saw in my life.” But he played an inadvertent part in the legend. The Australians were motivated in the tense final stages by the dubious run-out of Sammy Jones by W. G. Grace. Billy Murdoch mis-hit a delivery from A. G. Steel towards square leg and ran a single. The England wicket-keeper Alfred Lyttleton ran to get the ball and threw it back towards the wickets; Ted Peate came from slip to catch the ball but let it run free. Jones, at the non-strikers end, then walked out of his ground to pat down the pitch. W. G. Grace, backing up for Peate, quietly retrieved the ball, walked to the wickets and knocked them over. He appealed to Thoms, the umpire at square leg, who gave Jones out.

There was some later discussion of how Thoms reacted to Grace’s appeal. Tom Horan, one of the Australian team watching from the pavilion, thought that Thoms had replied: “If you claim it, sir, it is out.” However, Thoms later told Sydney Pardon that he had simply said: “Out”. He believed that, according to the laws, there was no dispute. The other umpire, Luke Greenwood — who umpired 32 first-class matches for Australian teams between 1880 and 1886 — later told A. W. Pullin in his Talks with Old English Cricketers (1900) that he would not have given Jones out as the ball “was to all intents and purposes dead, and there had been no attempt to make a second run.” While the Australians unanimously considered Grace’s actions unsporting, the cricket press at the time were broadly supportive of the run out; only in later years did some writers, including Pardon, concede that to run out Jones in that way was “not cricket”. In any case, the Australians used their grievance against Grace to produce an inspired bowling performance that won the game.

After 1882, Thoms never umpired another Test match, although he remained a first-class umpire until 1900. Instead, Tests in England were most often umpired by Frank Farrands (who stood in seven out of nine Tests played between 1884 and 1888) and Charles Pullin (who stood in nine out of twelve Tests between 1884 and 1890, and a further one in 1893). Nor did Greenwood, although both he and Thoms were used regularly in Australian matches during later tours.

Thoms (standing, far right) with the 1896 Australian team. George Giffin is sitting on the chair on the far left, Joe Darling is standing directly behind him. (Image: Wikipedia)

This oddity was never commented on or explained, but it seems likely that something lay behind it given that Thoms reputation remained very high. Perhaps the Australians were unhappy at his involvement in the Jones run-out, but surviving accounts suggest that they viewed him with the utmost respect. George Giffen, a member of the 1882 Australian team and who toured England five times, recalled some incidents involving Thoms in his 1898 autobiography. During the 1882 tour, Thoms umpired when the Australians played the “Gentlemen of England” at the Oval. Giffen took eight for 49, impressing Thoms in the process. After one delivery, he said: “Beautiful ball, my boy, would have beaten anyone!” To another: “Splendid, splendid! Stick to it — great future!” At one point, when Giffen appealed for lbw, Thoms began to giggle and had to walk towards mid-off to compose himself: “Not out, not out. The ball broke a furlong!” Giffen said that Thoms stood out as an umpire because he always explained his decisions: “It is much nicer for [the bowler] to know that, even though he had made a mistake, it would have been a close thing, than to have to be content with a sharp ‘No’, uttered in such a tone as to make him feel that in appealing he had committed a crime.”

Joe Darling, who toured England in 1896 and captained the Australian teams of 1899, 1902 and 1905, wrote in 1926 that Thoms, alongside Jim Phillips and Bob Crocket, was the best umpire he ever saw. He gave a slightly garbled account of the Jones run out in which he suggested that Thoms said: “It’s not cricket, but I must give the batsman out.” More reliably, he related that Thoms was one of the few umpires not intimidated by W. G. Grace and gave an example from his own experience. In 1896, Darling was playing his first match in England when Grace appealed to Thoms for a close run out. Thoms turned it down, and Grace retorted that it was a poor decision. According to Darling, Thoms “told Grace to mind his own business as he (Thoms) was the umpire.” Darling suggested that Thoms was happy to give Grace or other amateurs out; perhaps this was why he never umpired another Test after 1882 — he was too willing to stand up to influential amateurs.

Whatever the reason, that season marked another turning point for Thoms. The Australian team were not the only ones to complain about the standard of umpiring that year. There were frequent complaints in Cricket that some umpires — although certainly this did not apply to Thoms — either did not know the laws, or could not be relied upon. Writers in that particular publication suggested various measures but a key issue was that umpires continued to stand in matches involving the county that employed them.

All counties throughout the 1860s and 1870s continued to appoint their own umpires. This system meant that the two umpires in each match were employed by the two sides concerned. In theory, this would have balanced out any possible bias, but in practice even the most impartial umpire would have felt considerable pressure. For any borderline decision, or for any appeal at a tense moment in the game, in the back of his mind he must have wondered if deciding in favour of the opposition would result in his employment being terminated. Not only that, but — as was the case for Test umpires before the neutral umpires became standard — borderline decisions which favoured an umpire’s team, or any genuine mistakes, could have been attributed to bias by the opposition or their supporters.

Many writers and administrators recognised that the system was flawed, and there were occasional experiments with neutral umpires. But the incentive may not have been too great simply because there was still no organised competition in which the counties participated. Although a “Champion County” was proclaimed in most seasons, this was generally a decision made in the press and there was no official way to decide which was the best team. Nevertheless, county cricket was assuming greater importance all the time.

The controversies over umpiring in 1882 led to a desire for change. Cricket was at the forefront, with several articles calling for “Umpiring Reform” but it was Surrey and Yorkshire who eventually prompted the other counties into action. The Surrey authorities pressed for sweeping changes: as well as the appointment of impartial umpires, they proposed that all umpires had to pass an examination to receive a “certificate of competence”. Yorkshire were more concerned that umpires should be above suspicion of bias, and it was their simpler proposal which was almost wholly adopted by the county secretaries at their annual meeting in December 1882; each county was to send two nominees to the MCC who would then appoint them to umpire the season’s fixtures. No umpire would officiate any matches involving their own county. Their wage was also settled at £5 per game, taking the issue out of the hands of counties. A version of this system — where umpires were appointed to an official list at an annual meeting of the county captains — persisted well into the next century.

Unsurprisingly Thoms, with his impeccable reputation, was in considerably greater demand under this new system. In 1883, he umpired ten first-class games, more than he had done in the previous three seasons combined. The following year, he stood in fourteen games. If the reforms did not prevent regular complaints about umpires, at least mistakes were now attributed to incompetence rather than conspiracy. Another crackdown on poor umpiring, when concerns grew in the mid-1890s that the official weren’t very good, led to a further increase in Thoms’ workload. Between 1895 and 1899, he stood in 68 first-class matches, which represented more than a quarter of his career total. To have been so trusted for so long was a considerable achievement, particularly as Thoms celebrated his 70th birthday at the beginning of the 1896 season.

In the ongoing controversies over standards, he never appears to have been criticised and Cricket frequently held him up as a paragon of umpiring. The only complaint levelled at him in these later years was his reluctance to become involved in the “throwing question” — the issue of several bowlers supposedly having illegal bowling actions. His Wisden obituary written by Sydney Pardon, whose pursuit of “chuckers” bordered on obsession, stated:

“However, in a quiet way he made his influence felt, plainly telling the leading amateurs that if they wanted to rid the game of an evil they all admitted they must act for themselves and not throw the whole onus on the umpires. Moreover, he was the means of some audacious young throwers dropping out of county cricket, his kindly method being to get them employment in other directions.”

For the last twenty years or more of his life, he lived at 9 St George’s Road in Marylebone. His various enterprises over the years made him a very wealthy man: he left £12,343 in his will, which would be worth around £1.3 million today. But it is not entirely clear from where this money came; the most likely source was perhaps the sale of the Eton and Middlesex Ground. Another possible source of income was writing as he regularly provided articles to Cricket, particularly on the Incognitos club; he also received at least two collections from that club for around £100 each. The only hint about how he became so wealthy was his obituary in Cricket which stated that he “lived in most comfortable circumstances, for he had saved money.” It also said that he was always willing to help any professional cricketers who found themselves in financial difficulty. Following the death of his wife in 1898, his widowed daughter Catherine moved in with him.

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Thoms (left) towards the end of his career in the late 1890s with W. G. Grace (centre) and Bob Carpenter (right); the match is probably the South v North match in Hastings in September 1900, Thoms’ penultimate match.

His retirement after the 1900 season affected him badly and his Cricket obituary records that he “felt very depressed, for it was hard for him to give up the work which he loved so well.” He recovered to some extent, “although he was never quite the same man again” and had turned his thoughts to writing an autobiography. Whether he started on this, or if he left any notes, nothing was ever published.

Around the start of 1903, his health began to fail and it was no great surprise when he died at his home on 10 June 1903. Every tribute and obituary spoke in glowing terms of Thoms’ ability as an umpire, his lack of enemies and his fairness. There were also a few stories which maybe illustrate a little of his character. For example, he sarcastically described big hitting batsmen as “gentle tappers”. Once, when turning down an lbw appeal, told the bowler: “Leg before? Why the ball didn’t pitch in the same parish!” Thoms was critical of teams who repeatedly appealed when the batsman was clearly not out, and once answered a bowler who had made several such appeals: “I’ll make a note of it. I’ll think about it and let you know tomorrow morning”, to the hilarity of the nearby fielders. On another occasion, his response to a loud appeal was: “Not out. And I’m not deaf.”

Another story concerned a match played before declarations were permitted in the laws. As was the usual practice, the batsmen began to throw their wickets away, but the fielding side realised what was happening and began to bowl wides and no-balls to prolong the innings and increase their chances of saving the game. Cricket relates:

“There was pandemonium. The spectators became very excited. The other umpire began to get very nervous, and went up to Thoms, saying ‘We can’t let this go on. Look at our own reputation.’ Thoms said ‘Get back to your end. This lot can’t hurt my reputation, but they can break my head, and they will, too, if we interfere. I am an umpire, not a policeman!'”

This gentle good humour prevented anyone every becoming too upset by his sometimes biting comments. Several bowlers remembered, like George Giffen, the encouragement that Thoms gave to their efforts even when declining their appeals. The Times said: “No umpire ever stood higher in general esteem, his integrity and sound judgment commanding the respect of every one who came in contact with him.” Remarkably for the time, when most writers and former cricketers continually complained that cricket was in decline and not as good as it once was, Thoms always believed that modern cricketers were at the very least the equal of those with whom he played in the 1850s. He was a huge admirer of W. G. Grace’s cricket. Wisden noted:

Thoms always looked at cricket with the eyes of a young man, and was quite free from the fault — so common among men who live to a great age — of thinking that all the good things belonged to the past. This freshness of mind prevented his talk about cricket from ever becoming prosy or flat. In his last years as an umpire … he was just as enthusiastic in his praise of fine work with bat or ball as he would have been forty years ago.

The writer of that obituary also observed: “In dress, manner and appearance Thoms belonged essentially to the sixties, looking exactly like the photographs of some of the players of those days. He had a keen sense of humour, and told his cricket stories in a short, crisp way peculiarly his own.” The Times concluded its obituary: “With him passes away a personality quite unique in the cricket world,” while F. S. Ashley-Cooper in Cricket simply ended his own short tribute with: “He was one of the best of men.”

Note: During his lifetime, it was generally stated that Thoms was born in 1825 but he believed that it was actually 1826. Modern sources go for this later date but as there was no requirement for births to be registered at that time, there is no way to be certain.