Lives in Cricket No 17 - Fuller Pilch

No doubt an increase in the membership of the East Kent Cricket Club had triggered off a demand for equipment of all kinds, especially bats, as it would have been fashionable for gentlemen and officers to have their own bats made to order. In the Kent County Cricket archives at Canterbury there is a receipt, signed by William, who seems to have been in charge of the paperwork, on Fuller’s behalf, for £11 8s 6d for the supply of ‘practice bats, balls, stumps and bails’ in 1849 as well as a bill on printed paper headed ‘F & W Pilch, tailors and drapers’. 16 At first sight it seems strange that Fuller preferred to label himself in the census as a manufacturer of cricket equipment rather than as a ‘tailor’ or ‘cricketer’, but with his playing days drawing to a close his thoughts may have been looking to the future. If he was going to be able to support himself during his retirement he would need to expand his business as a supplier of cricket accessories further than Canterbury and Oxford while his reputation was still big enough to attract new customers in what was becoming a very competitive market. Not long after the census was completed, Fuller was back at Oxford, coaching as usual, in the spring of 1851, preferring to miss the first eight All-England games in May before joining them at the beginning of June for the next six, beginning against Twenty-Two of Wisbech and District. Clarke agreed to bring his All-England Eleven to Oxford again to play Sixteen of Oxfordshire on 6 and 7 June, but the development of the Prince of Wales ground by Fuller and Martin had been abandoned and they arranged for the 108 Fuller’s final seasons The Lord’s museum record of a heavy, unspliced bat, apparently made and used by Fuller Pilch himself. 16 Fuller was certainly not illiterate, though there was no compulsory education in his time. I have found no record of his formal education other than a brief reference to his study of Greek at school. It is believed he grew up in Brisley, not far from his birthplace, and may have attended school there or at nearby Mileham which had a free school endowed in 1743.