It is not very often that any of our contributors go back as far as the nineteenth century, but John Winn did so recently with his interesting blog on Wisden Almanack of 1890, quickly followed by Brian Sanderson's story of Bobby Peel, who was very much a contemporary of Johnny Briggs. Cricket is full of reminiscences and happily many connections suddenly appear. John mentioned in passing the appearance of the former Hollywood cinema star C. Aubrey Smith for England in South Africa during 1889. This rang a bell with me as I was sure I had recently read something about this gentleman in a South African cricket publication.
Charles Aubrey Smith (Sussex and England)
After a bit of digging I eventually came up with the story which involved two games between South Africa and England in 1889, which were apparently given official Test Match status many years after the event. Aubrey Smith captained England in the first match, thus becoming the youngest man at the age of 25 to captain his country. In addition, because he did not play in the second match, he is also the only man to play just one Test Match as captain. Quite a late addition to the long list of 'one Test wonders'.
The first match was played in Port Elizabeth and England won a low scoring affair by eight wickets. South Africa were bowled out for 84 and 129 whereas England made 148 and 67-2. The second match, in which Smith was absent, was played at Newlands, Cape Town and was even more one sided. England made 292 and then proceeded to bowl the home side out for a meagre 47 and 43 to win easily by an innings.
The star of the show in a big way was Lancashire's slow left arm bowler Johnny Briggs, who took 7-17 in the first innings and 8-11 in the second. Briggs had been born in Sutton in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire which produced a whole host of cricketers over the years. His father was a league professional and Johnny started as a substitute professional at Hornsea, East Yorkshire at the age of only 13. When his father moved to Widnes, Johnny Briggs was soon picked up by Lancashire where he became a top class spinner for the county and for England.
Johnny Briggs (Lancashire and England)
He toured Australia six times, only equalled by Colin Cowdrey and took a hat trick in the Sydney Test of 1892. He was also the first player to take one hundred Test wickets. Only a small man, at 5 foot 5 inches, he regularly took 100 wickets in a season for Lancashire. He developed heart trouble after being hit by a ball and later developed a mental illness which resulted in his early death at the age of only 39.
Now to return to C. Aubrey Smith, whose career as a cricketer was only very brief. He was a quick bowler who appeared for Cambridge University and Sussex before the turn of the nineteenth century and was mainly a quick bowler with a strange curving run up (something like John Price in more recent times). He would start from deep mid off and earned the nickname of 'Round the corner Smith'.
He first appeared on the London stage in 1895 and also in some early British silent films. However his real fame as an actor came when he established himself in Hollywood, where he founded a cricket club for British exiles in 1932. He was not a great success in silent films but once the 'talkies' took over he became the epitome of the stiff upper lipped English gentleman throughout the late 1930s and the 1940s. He was essentially the leader of the British community in Hollywood and was knighted by George VI in 1944 for his contribution to Anglo-American relations. He died at the age of 85 in 1948.
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