Tom Emmett: The Spirit of Yorkshire Cricket
About this ebook
In the 1860s, he once took 16 wickets for Yorkshire in an afternoon. In the 1870s, only one other player scored over 4,000 runs and took over 400 wickets in English cricket: W.G.Grace. Emmett had his best ever season with the ball in the 1880s, aged nearly 45. In all first-class cricket, he took over 1,500 wickets at under 14, bowling in an idiosyncratic style which included wides and balls ‘which no man had ever seen or dreamed of before’.
For three decades, Emmett travelled endlessly to appear in club and county matches, and went to Australia three times in five years, appearing in the first Test match. He set records and won games, but also played in a style which at one time made him ‘the most popular professional in England.’
He pleased cricket followers with his wit and enthusiasm, but his life had a large share of tragedy. How he handled those highs and lows made him the true spirit of Yorkshire cricket.
About the author
Jeremy Lonsdale was born in Hornsea, East Yorkshire. He has followed Yorkshire County Cricket Club and Hull City since the early 1970s, and watches both as often as possible. In four months in 2014, he had the unexpected double pleasure of being present both when Hull City played in the FA Cup Final at Wembley and Yorkshire secured the county championship at Trent Bridge.
He is the author of ‘A Game Taken Seriously: The Foundations of Yorkshire’s Cricketing Power’, published by the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians in 2017, which is a social history of the development of cricket in the county in the 19th century. The book was long-listed for the Cricket Society/MCC Cricket Book of the Year Award 2018. He also wrote ‘The Army’s Grace: The Life of Brigadier General R.M.Poore’, published by Spellmount in 1992, and has contributed articles to the Yorkshire CCC Yearbook. He studied history at King’s College, University of London, and has a PhD from Brunel University in public management and evaluation.
