Lives in Cricket No 17 - Fuller Pilch

complaining about the bowling they were being asked by their employers to face. It was rumoured that it was a short-sighted, desperate, last-ditch attempt engineered by a few of the reactionary MCC members to prevent what now seemed to be the inevitable acceptance of the bowling they disliked. By cajoling the players into signing the statement, with either a little sweetener perhaps, or threats of future discrimination when teams were selected for lucrative matches at Lord’s, they had hoped to get their own way. Whatever the reason, wiser heads at MCC stepped in and the declaration was eventually withdrawn so the final game could be arranged. Before they all headed off to Brighton, six of the All England players, Beagley, Searle, Marsden, Saunders, Mathews and Ashby and three of the Sussex professionals, Slater, Thwaites and James Broadbridge, stayed in London to join Caldecourt and Sparks to play against ‘Seventeen Gentlemen’ at Lord’s on 25, 26 and 27 June. In this match the Gentlemen were not banned from using any form of round-arm bowling and George Knight took seven wickets while they dismissed the Players for 128 and 140 to win by 29 runs. Twelve days later Fuller Pilch was back at Lord’s with seven others from the All England team to play in a second ‘Eleven Players’ against ‘Seventeen Gentlemen’ match on 9, 10 and 11 July. The Gentlemen, including Knight, were on this occasion banned from using any form of round-arm bowling and were thrashed by an innings as the professionals rattled up a massive score of 334, including 100 from Saunders and a useful 38 from Fuller. This was another strong demonstration to those still rejecting round-arm that batting techniques had made so much progress that bowlers had to be allowed to develop their own methods to deal with them. Five days later, on 16 July, Fuller was again playing at Lord’s, this time with the Bury St Edmunds club under the title of Suffolk. There was no organised county cricket structure in those days and for many years clubs would often claim to be representative of their whole county in attempts to add importance to a fixture, sometimes adding well-known guest players as well as their own resident professional, to attract even more paying customers. ‘Suffolk’ inflicted a memorable defeat of MCC by 22 runs to set up huge expectations for the return at Bury St Edmunds in September. One week later the final ‘experimental’ Sussex and All England match began at Brighton on 23 July. The Times reported: The grand match of cricket, between the county of Sussex and all England, commenced here yesterday. The interest which it had excited is unprecedented, and it is doubtful whether, within the memory of man, so many persons were ever assembled at a cricket-match. People have come, not only from all parts of Sussex, but from London, and even distant parts of England; and the cricketing ground, which is very spacious, and one of the finest in the Kingdom, was literally thronged. The number of spectators present was variously estimated at from 3,000 to 6,000. 24 Round-Arm bowling proves its case