Lives in Cricket No 17 - Fuller Pilch

across from the on to the off, is about the nastiest stuff you can have; for if she shoots she wants a deal of play to stop her, and if she jumps up “knuckle high”, it is a job to keep her away from short-slip, or from popping up.’ They actually faced each other in 65 matches and Mynn captured Fuller’s wicket 34 times out of 111 innings. For Kent, William Hillyer, with 497 recorded wickets in 82 matches, and Alfred Mynn, with 417 in ninety games, were the most successful of Fuller’s bowling contemporaries with the county. I have not included the record of Edgar Willsher as he continued to play for another five years after Fuller Pilch had passed on, and ended his Kent career with 786 wickets from 145 matches. Fuller did have a good look at his bowling as they played together in 12 matches before Fuller’s retirement, during which Willsher took 39 wickets. Fuller appears to have been confused when he named Frederick Fagge in his list of the best Kent bowlers. Fagge had rarely bowled in any of his 14 county matches and only taken only one wicket, although he had taken 85 wickets when playing for the ‘Gentlemen of Kent’ in 23 matches between 1833 and 1853. But Fuller had enjoyed a closer look at Fagge’s bowling when they appeared together in six matches for Norfolk between 1844 and 1847 during which Fagge had taken 18 wickets and this would seem to have been the basis for Fuller’s assessment. Batting Naturally, Fuller had plenty to say about the Kent batting: When we came to our batting, we managed to all work together somehow. Ned Wenman played back and cut, and I was about the most forward player in England; and between us we puzzled the bowlers sometimes. My play, as you know, was a good deal what they called ‘Pilch’s poke’, because I relied on smothering the ball and drove her forward. Mr Walter Mynn and Hillyer were two useful ones, though neither of them batted in any style, and Walter was very stiff. But those two never knew fear, and if we were likely to want a few notches at the finish, I always kept them back to the last; or if we had a quarter of an hour to time I would put them in and say, ‘You two bide till the clock strikes seven, and don’t think of the notches.’ Ay, and many a time they’ve done it too! There was one batsman Fuller praised above all: Mr Felix on his own day was my man. He was not so safe as Mr Charles Taylor of Sussex, or Joseph Guy of Nottingham, or Ned Wenman, or perhaps me; but when he got to work, and the ground and the light suited him, it was a wonderful sight to see him bat. He knew the whole science of the game, and had a hand and eye such as no one e’er beat him at; and when he saw the ball was pretty well safe to keep outside the off-stump, it was a beautiful thing to see him throw his right foot forward - for, as you remember, he was left-handed - and do a little bit 124 A pipe in Fuller Pilch’s back parlour