SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: In the baptismal records in Croydon Minster’s archives, DAVID MORGAN has discovered another cricketer who was influential in the early years of the international game – except that Sam Cosstick was playing for the Australians
The entry in the scorebook read:
Lockyer: 2,1,1,2,1,1,1 ct Huddleston b Cosstick 9
Bowled over: Sam Cosstick emigrated to Australia in his 20s, and became a sought-after professional cricketer
This came from a cricket match, played at the Melbourne Cricket Club in January 1864 between an All-England XI and a Victoria state team. It was significant in several ways.
This England team predated the official Test team and this tour, the first to Australia, was arranged by George Parr. His initiative was an important one in helping the development of the game in Australia.
Before cricket stats became as well-kept as they are today, with Wisden and Playfair annuals keeping tabs on every detail of the top players’ lives and careers, the majority of the crowd in Melbourne 160-odd years ago probably didn’t realise that one member of the England team and one of the Victoria team were both born in Croydon.
In fact, the baptismal records of Croydon Parish Church, now Croydon Minster, show both Tom Lockyer and Samuel Cosstick were christened here.
Tom Lockyer, born November 1, 1826, and christened in Croydon on December 17, 1826, became one of England’s greatest cricketers of the 19th Century.
A Surrey player, he was a great batsman-wicketkeeper who was also able to bowl when the need arose. After he finished his playing days, he became the landlord of the Sheldon Arms in Croydon.
Samuel Cosstick was born January 1, 1836, and baptised on February 7 that year. His parents were Samuel and Mary.
While Lockyer starred for Surrey and was a member of the first England tour of America (as David Morgan wrote in a previous Sunday Supplement here in 2023), Cosstick followed a very different cricketing path.
Stumper: Croydon-born Tom Lockyer was the finest wicketkeeper of his era
He emigrated to Australia in his 20s, arriving in Adelaide aboard the SS Star Queen in December 1854. It was said that he was attracted to Victoria by the discovery of gold.
However, cricket seemed to be his main interest and he soon began to play for Richmond Cricket Club. Mr AJ Agg, Commissioner of Railways, was one of those people who subscribed to pay a weekly wage to Cosstick to acquire his bowling services for the club.
Richmond CC is still in existence today. Paul Collingwood, one of England’s best players of this century, cut his overseas teeth by playing for Richmond in 2000-2001.
Cosstick must have been good. He was approached to join Melbourne Cricket Club, which he did in January 1861. This is probably Australia’s most prestigious sports club, their own MCC, based at the world famous MCG which has staged Olympics and Commonwealth Games as well as being the cradle of Test cricket, home to Aussie Rules football, and which next month will stage one of the rugby union Tests between Australia and the British and Irish Lions.
Sam Cosstick’s job for MCC at the Melbourne Cricket Ground was to maintain the pitch and to play in club matches as required. His services were also needed to bowl in the nets to club members each afternoon from 2.30pm onwards. He initially earned £3 10s a week, which eventually rose to £7 per week – worth the equivalent of £720 today.
Cosstick quickly earned a reputation as a reliable and hardworking bowler. He possessed a round-arm action which, combined with his pitching the ball at a consistent length, made him an opponent to be feared, according to one reporter.
“On a sticky wicket,” wrote another, “he was almost unplayable.”
That’s out: how Cosstick got the wicket of Lockyer in 1864
As a batsman, Cosstick was of the “rough and ready” type. He could hit hard and on several occasions got his team out of difficulty with a knock of 20 or 30 in the lower order.
When WG Grace took an England team to Australia in 1874, Victoria was one of their opponents. Cosstick was involved in a controversy. Given out, he refused to leave the field, saying that he had been dismissed by the wrong umpire. Grace took the England team off the field until Cosstick accepted the decision and returned to the pavilion.
Cosstick, at 41, was well past his best when the England team played their first official Test series against Australia in 1877, and was not under consideration by the selectors. However, he did stand as umpire in the second Test at Melbourne, starting on March 31. England won to level the two-match series.
Match reports: a report on WG Grace’s tour to Australia, with ‘doughty’ Sam Cosstick facing the English captain’s bowling
After his time at Melbourne, Cosstick moved to Maitland in 1883 to be the groundsman at Albion Cricket Club.
He died, aged 60, in 1896, having suffered with throat cancer. The Australian newspapers were full of praise for him. It seemed that he was quite a character.
One obituary writer remembered that around 20 years earlier he had met Cosstick while they were both sailing to Adelaide aboard the Aldinga. The weather was stormy and the boat was tossed about, forcing the skipper to put into Lacepede Bay to ride out the storm.
The majority of the passengers were terribly seasick, but Cosstick was unaffected and never missed a meal. One night he ate a hearty supper of herrings, stout and baked potatoes. The next evening, still on board, another passenger played a trick on Cosstick and gave him a baked potato filled with cayenne pepper.
After a couple of bites he was coughing and spluttering. It took the old cricketer “two or three glasses of stout to set himself right!”
At the end of a hot day’s play at Melbourne, Cosstick was fond of a drink.
“I remember Old Sam at the close of play after a hot day in Melbourne, blow the froth off a pewter of shandy, quaff the contents and pass his hand over his mouth.”
High profile: Cosstick received much coverage in Victoria’s newspapers
He was a fierce competitor, too.
In a single-wicket competition where he was up against Edwin Fowler who scored 51, Cosstick bowled three or four full tosses or beamers, a reporter wrote that he had deliberately aimed at Fowler’s head. In the ensuing argument, Cosstick poured oil on troubled waters by inviting the reporter to have a drink with him.
One Australian reporter wrote that the phrase “cricket is a funny game” was first coined by Cosstick.
Among the many reminiscences was the image of one of Cosstick’s idiosyncrasies. Before every ball that he bowled, he always gave “a little shake of the hand”.
At the time when Cosstick was at his cricketing peak, the discussion as to who was the greater Victoria bowler came down to a choice between him and Frank Allan. Cosstick was less brilliant than Allan but could be relied upon to be the workhorse, sending down accurate over after accurate over. Allan was wonderful at times on the field but unreliable off it, choosing to go to a state fair on one occasion, rather than represent his country.
Flashes of brilliance, though, overcame doggedness in the eyes of the selectors.
The most successful spell of bowling enjoyed by Cosstick came in a match against Tasmania in 1869 when he took six wickets, conceding just one run in the process.
Cosstick’s sons, James and Harry, placed a tribute to their father in the local newspaper after his death, “in sad and loving remembrance of our dear father, Samuel Cosstick, who departed this life on April 8 1896”.
Cosstick and Lockyer would have had several opportunities to socialise during the England tour of 1864. Did they ever swap notes about their times growing up in Croydon?
Fondly remembered: one of Cosstick’s obituaries
As well as the representative matches, there were also games where the Australians and the English players were mixed together. In March 1867 at the Melbourne ground, Parr’s XI played Anderson’s XI, the England captain against the Victoria skipper. Six England players were on each side, together with five Victoria state players. Both Lockyer and Cosstick were named in Anderson’s side, although from the scorecard it appeared that Cosstick never took the field. Lockyer’s 44 and 40 not out went along way to ensuring a win for Anderson’s side.
I wonder how much Cosstick and Lockyer chatted to each other on the field? Was there any sledging? “Come on, you Croydon so-and-so, is that the best shot you can come up with?”
Two Croydon sportsmen, appearing together, on opposing sides and far, far from home. England’s current Test XI includes Jamie Smith, like Lockyer a wicketkeeper-batsman. Smith, of course, went to school in Croydon: will any of the Australian team for the first Test in November have Croydon roots, too?
David Morgan, pictured right, is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- Lost at sea: nearly 300 dead on their journey for a new life
- Admiral Aldrich and lasting mystery of the Arctic’s lost ships
- Courtroom drama in 1892: ‘An Infuriated Bear Shot in Croydon’
- Enter the Almshouses and travel back in time four centuries
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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Excellent article. Many thanks.
Ironic W G Grace taking the team off in support of the umpire’s decision, when he had a reputation for not accepting being given out himself! On one occasion when refusing to walk when given out he said “they’ve come to watch me bat not you bowl….”
Another great piece by IC’s star writer. Give the man a bonus. As an aside, great to see a cricketer properly attired! How standards of dress have slipped