Lives in Cricket No 15 - Michael Falcon

He was only a little fellow and he was hooking Michael Falcon off his eyebrows. First he hit him to square-leg, and when they moved fine-leg round he started hitting him fine. When he got to 200 we were all cheering madly when a pigeon landed on the wicket, and Titchmarsh somehow got it to hop on to his bat. He held it up to the crowd to acknowledge the cheering, then sent it flapping off with a flick of the wrist. I thought the cheering would never stop. Charles Titchmarsh was one of the very few batsmen in the Minor Counties Championship who was equal to the task of facing Michael Falcon at his best. He was as pre-eminent a batsman in Hertfordshire as Falcon was in Norfolk as an all-rounder. Like Falcon, he could certainly have played first-class county cricket had he been so minded. He did find time to participate in Archie MacLaren’s 1922/23 tour of Australia and New Zealand and, in all first-class cricket, scored 2,589 runs at a highly creditable average of 39.22. Michael Falcon managed to squeeze four first-class matches into a very full season. Indeed he was so busy that he had to miss Norfolk’s last Championship fixture as he had business to attend to in London. 45 A strong MCC side, led by Falcon, who did little, were saved by rain when playing against the tourists. Playing against Cambridge University for the Free Foresters, he conceded 124 runs in taking three first innings wickets 46 but then redeemed himself with an undefeated innings of 86, his highest first-class score since his century for MCC against Leicestershire in 1911. He also did little for the Gentlemen either at The Oval or at Scarborough and his first-class career outside of his annual appearance for the Free Foresters at Fenner’s appeared to be winding down; his four first-class wickets were taken at a cost of over 80 runs apiece. Not to be outshone, Falcon’s wife Kathleen also played cricket in 1926. An article in the Norfolk News reported that she took part in a ladies’ match, making nine and one and taking a single wicket. As At His Peak: 1919-1929 78 45 In the ten seasons from 1920 to 1929, Falcon played 24 three-day first-class matches, 99 two-day matches for Norfolk and often appeared in one or two other important two-day matches per season. Typically he was thus playing ‘senior cricket’ on about thirty days a season, to which should be added say three or four days for travelling to or returning from fixtures well away from his home. 46 Falcon again found himself being hit for 18 in an over by a Cambridge undergraduate; this time Jack Meyer was the batsman.