Henry Richardson      

Henry Adair Richardson dropped out of first-class cricket while still a young man, and was only a name to the present generation. Old cricketers will remember him as a brilliant batsman, who for one season was quite in the front rank. He learnt the game at Tonbridge, he and the late J. W. Dale, if I am not mistaken, first making Tonbridge famous as a cricket school. In his last year in the eleven he made scores of 157 and 150, going up to Cambridge with a big reputation. Still he did not get his blue as a Freshman. He was in the Cambridge XI in 1867, 1868, and 1869, and, though meeting with no success as a batsman, was on the winning side in all three years against Oxford at Lord's. In 1868 he reached his highest point. It was his great season. He was the chief run-getter for a fine Cambridge team, heading the batting with an average--very high in those days-of 38. Early in the year he scored 97 and 51 for Sixteen of Trinity College against the United South of England Eleven, and against Surrey at the Oval he played an innings of 143 that remains historical.

James Southerton was then in the first flush of his fame as a slow bowler, his pronounced off-break being almost as much dreaded as the googlies of the South African bowlers nearly forty years later. Mr. Richardson treated Southerton as he had never been treated before, and gave a dazzling display of hitting. The innings gained him his place for Gentlemen against Players both at Lord's and the Oval. He failed at Lord's, but at the Oval he made 55. Like his contemporary, W. B. Money, and F. E. R. Fryer, who immediately followed him in the Cambridge eleven, he was not half the batsman at Lord's that he was at Fenner 's and the Oval. Without being great, Mr. Richardson was a good wicket-keeper, and in the University match in 1869 he got rid of six men--three stumped and three caught. Curiously enough the Oxford wicket-keeper, the late W. A. Stewart, was even more successful, catching six and stumping two. Mr. Richardson was an excellent billiard player--one of the best amateurs of his day--but he met more than his match in W. W. Rodger of Oxford.
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack