Johnny Briggs: Poor Johnny

Briggs toured Australia on six occasions when travelling Down Under meant an arduous sea voyage and, in all, took part in eleven Ashes series. To this day, he remains the only cricketer to take a hat-trick and score a century in cricket’s oldest and most combative series of matches.

A true working-class hero, Briggs played to the gallery, but was nevertheless a hard-working professional who took on a prodigious workload. He began as a match-winning batsman and became a world-class bowler and was always a dynamic fielder in his favourite position in the covers. But he suffered intermittently from epilepsy and the second of two major attacks suffered at a Leeds music hall on the evening of the first day of the Headingley Test against Australia finally cut short his life at the age of 39.

He died in a lunatic asylum in a tragic and untimely end to a marvellous career.