Tom Emmett: The Spirit of Yorkshire Cricket

by Jeremy Lonsdale
Lord Hawke called Tom Emmett ‘the greatest “character” who ever stepped onto the field’. 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: WG 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’.