Johnny Tyldesley

Tyldesley made his first-class debut, also his County Championship debut, on 22 July 1895, playing for Lancashire against Gloucestershire in a drawn match at Old Trafford. Batting in the middle order, he scored 13 and 33 not out.[5] In his second match for Lancashire, Tyldesley scored 152 not out with 17 fours and 1 six against Warwickshire on a rain-affected pitch at Edgbaston, enabling Lancashire to win by an innings and 54 runs.[6] He played in ten first-class matches in 1895 and 17 in 1896. His innings at Edgbaston remained his only century in that period, though he scored six half-centuries in 1896 with a top score of 68.[7]

Having been runners-up five times in the previous six seasons, Lancashire won their first official County Championship title in 1897. Tyldesley began the season with a run of indifferent scores and did not make a half-century until his fourteenth match, starting on 1 July at Old Trafford, when he scored 54 and 53 against Essex.[8] He followed up with three successive centuries, scoring 106 and 100 not out in the same match against Warwickshire at Edgbaston[9] and then 174, his highest score to date, against Sussex at Old Trafford.[10] After that, his form lapsed again and, apart from one innings of 68 against Somerset at Old Trafford,[11] he made low scores only, including four ducks, in the remainder of the season. He generally batted at number five for Lancashire in 1897. His season tally was 1,017 runs in 26 matches at the average of 30.81. He scored three centuries, three half-centuries and held 13 catches. He surpassed 1,000 runs in a season for the first time, going on to achieve the feat in each of nineteen successive seasons.[7]

Tyldesley scored 1,918 runs in 1898 including his first double-century. He was invited to join Lord Hawke's tour of South Africa the following winter.

Tyldesley played for England for the first time against South Africa in 1898–99. He hit a decisive 112 in one of the Tests.

England team v. Australia, Trent Bridge 1899. Back row: Dick Barlow (umpire), Tom Hayward, George Hirst, Billy Gunn, J T Hearne (12th man), Bill Storer (wkt kpr), Bill Brockwell, V A Titchmarsh (umpire). Middle row: C B Fry, K S Ranjitsinhji, W G Grace (captain), Stanley Jackson. Front row: Wilfred Rhodes, Johnny Tyldesley.

In 1899, Tyldesley played his first Ashes Tests at Trent Bridge and Lord's. He failed in these matches, but by this time was established as a top-class batsman with a superb range of strokes and wonderful footwork that made him effective even on pitches where the ball had considerable spin it did after rain in those days.

In the 1901 season, Tyldesley scored 3,041 runs in first-class matches. As a result, he was selected as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in the 1902 edition. Wisden commented that he would have done even better but for the unpredictable state of the Old Trafford pitch in the early part of the season.[12]

Tyldesley was not at his best in the Tests.

In 1902 his "superb" 138 in four and a half hours at Edgbaston was critical in placing England in a winning position. Almost twenty years later, Jessop remarked on the accuracy of his cutting.[13]

For Lancashire his batting, regardless of the weather, was "consistently brilliant".

Tyldesley toured Australia in 1903–04 and, despite again not making a Test hundred, he played an outstanding innings on a "sticky wicket" in the second Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. He was dismissed for 97 in England's first innings when they totalled 315 over the first two days of the match. Rain caused the pitch to deteriorate badly on the third day and Australia were all out for 122, of which Victor Trumper scored 74. England struggled to 74/5 at the close with Tyldesley 48 not out. On the morning of the fourth day, he reached 62 before being dismissed with the England score at 90/8. England were all out for 103 and then dismissed Australia for 111 to win the match by 185 runs.[14] England's captain Pelham Warner said of Tyldesley's 62 that "surely a better innings has never been played on a bad wicket".[15]

"Forty-six centuries in eleven years." Johnny Tyldesley as caricatured by "Spy" (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair, August 1906.

For the rest of the 1900s Tyldesley was, despite the emergence of Hobbs always in the forefront of English professional batting and seldom failed to be near the top of the batting averages, which he headed in the wet summer of 1910 with an average of 46. Though the 1905 Ashes series was his most successful with two centuries, from the following year Tyldesley gradually dropped out of the representative scene, playing his last Test in 1909. However, in 1906 against that year County Champions, Kent, Tyldesley made his highest score of 295 not out and would certainly have made a triple hundred had he not ran out of partners. With Reggie Spooner rarely available owing to business calls between 1907 and 1910, and Archie MacLaren declining, Lancashire were much too dependent upon Tyldesley to make a respectable score and he played superbly especially when one considers the fire in Old Trafford pitches in fine weather at that time.

For Lancashire he remained a potent force right up to the outbreak of World War I and, in 1919, he made 272 against Derbyshire.

Tyldesley served in the British Army during the war and attained the rank of corporal.