Sutton-in-Ashfield has ‘gifted’ many fine cricketers to Nottinghamshire over more than 160 years so it probably appropriate that the best of them arrived as a Christmas Gift.
Thomas George ‘Topsy’ Wass was born on Boxing Day 1873 – Happy 150th Topsy! – and set records as a fast bowler that remain today.
In a career cut short by WWI (he played only one game after 1918), he took 1666 First-Class wickets, 1653 of them for Notts – more than 300 ahead of the second-placed Bill Voce.
Throughout the first two decades of the 20th C, he dominated Notts'bowling, taking an extraordinary 158 five-wicket hauls for Notts and ten wickets in a match 45 times. He often bowled unchanged through an innings – in partnership with either Arthur Hallam or John Gunn.
Topsy Wass took 100 wickets in a season ten times between 1900-1912, his best year being 1907 when he took 163 wickets, which puts him third in the county’s all-time list. That earned him a place in the Wisden Cricketers of the Year for 1908.
Wass appeared for Sutton CC from about 1890 and had a professional engagement away from Trent Bridge, with Edinburgh Academicals, in or about 1895. The following year he played his first match at the ground that was to be his home when as a member of the Colts XXII he gave notice of his promise, capturing the wickets of Harry Butler Daft and Billy Gunn.
His well-earned First-Class debut followed, playing for Nottinghamshire v MCC at Lord’s; his first wicket was Charles de Trafford, clean bowled for 44. Over the next few seasons, an appointment with Liverpool CC meant that Topsy was not regularly available for the First Eleven until 1899.
Despite a couple of years in which he was less effective, Wass led the Notts attack to great effect until 1914 when world affairs brought the game to a halt.
Just to underline the scale of his achievements – his 158 five-wicket hauls is almost 60 more than the next best; not even Dick Attewell (second with 95) or Harold Larwood (third with 89) come close to his tally.
His best return in one innings was 9-67 against Derbyshire at the Miners Welfare Ground, Blackwell in 1911 (William Riley took the tenth); that was in the home side’s second innings – he had already seized 5-70 in the first!
He took 16 wickets in a match twice – against Lancashire at Liverpool in 1906 and versus Essex at home in 1908. In both cases, such was his prowess that all 16 wickets were taken in a single day.
Outside county cricket, Wass made only four other First-Class appearances; three for the Players v Gentlemen and a solitary Test against South Africa in 1904. He did not match his county figures in the Test, taking only three for 134 in the match. He was among the 13 chosen for the Lord’s Test of 1907 but left out of the final XI; he was similarly omitted from the final team in two more Players XIs in the same year and that brought his brief representative cricket to an end.
Topsy was a big man – he towers over most of his colleagues in the team line-ups of that era – standing over 6ft and weighing around 14 stone. 
He was, to put it kindly, ‘a very plain-spoken man’ and could express himself forcibly if colleagues (or foes) earned his disapproval. Indeed, Peter Wynne Thomas suggests that ‘there can be little doubt that he would have appeared more frequently [in representative teams] if he had been more amenable to the strictures of international cricket.’
When not playing cricket, Tom Wass was – as were so many Sutton cricketers – employed as a miner, working at New Hucknall, Crown Farm and Sutton collieries.
Although he ended his First-Class career in 1914, Wass returned to Trent Bridge in 1920 to play in Joe Hardstaff’s benefit match v Yorkshire in a rain-ruined match that had him listed to bat at number ten.
That was something of a promotion – he spent most of cricket as a genuine number eleven, scoring only one half-century and averaging just 7.29 from almost 400 First-Class innings. That half century, 56, came against Derbyshire (he seems to have enjoyed playing them) in 1906 when he added 98 for the ninth wicket with John W Day - probably the only time Topsy was top-scorer in a Notts innings – in a ten-wicket win.
Peter Wynne Thomas, quite politely, says that ‘His fielding was on a par with his batting and he normally stood at mid-on.’
Thomas ‘Topsy’ Wass died at his home in Sutton-in-Ashfield, he seems to have lived there all his life, of carcinoma of the stomach on 27 October 1953, a few months short of his eightieth birthday.
His remarkable career suggests that, in Nottinghamshire at least, we should re-name 26 December as ‘Bowling Day’!
December 2023
Tom Wass's profile and stats can be seen here