Bob Thoms

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Bob Thoms
Thoms pictured back row 1st right with the Australian cricket team in England in 1896

Robert Arthur Thoms (19 May 1826 – 10 June 1903) was a cricket umpire who stood in two Test matches, the first two played in England, in 1880 and 1882.

Bob Thoms' long umpiring career encompassed 244 first-class matches and lasted from 1863 to 1900.[1] When he died, The Times said that he was "the most famous umpire the game has known".[2] The Australian Test captain Joe Darling said, "Thoms was about the only umpire in England who was not afraid of Grace or anyone else."[3] The weekly magazine Cricket said:

He was universally regarded as the umpire of the period, imperturbable, accurate and prompt in his decisions, and a great authority on the laws of the game. Unlike most umpires who, when they have given a decision, decline to argue or discuss the matter, he had a habit of explaining just what had happened, and as he very seldom made a mistake, his comments were always heard with respect and often admiration.[4]

Thoms had appeared as a player in three first-class matches in 1850 and 1851: one for an Under 36 XI, one for Marylebone Cricket Club and Metropolitan Clubs and one for the All England Eleven.[5] He was a fine fieldsman and an excellent sprinter over 100 yards.[6]

Family grave of Robert Arthur Thoms in Highgate Cemetery

Thoms was born in Marylebone, London. His father was part-proprietor of a cricket ground in Middlesex. He attended a "good school", where he learnt Latin and Greek.[4] He frequently wrote articles on cricket for the sporting press, "always having something interesting to say in quaint language, which was charming and entirely his own".[4]

He and his wife, the former Elizabeth Constance Farley, had four children, two of whom died in infancy. She died in 1898; he died in 1903 at Regent's Park, London.[5][7] They are buried in a family grave on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.

References[]

  1. ^ "Robert Thoms as Umpire in First-Class Matches". CricketArchive. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
  2. ^ Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, 1904 edition, obituary notice.
  3. ^ Quoted in Derek Birley, The Willow Wand, Simon & Schuster, London, 1989, p. 34.
  4. ^ a b c W. A. Bettesworth, "Robert Thoms: Some Reminiscences", Cricket, 18 June 1903, pp. 209–10.
  5. ^ a b "Robert Thoms". CricketArchive. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
  6. ^ Seventy-One Not Out, by William Caffyn, William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1899, p. 24.
  7. ^ "Robert Arthur Thoms". Ancestry. Retrieved 27 September 2020.

External links[]

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