Lives in Cricket No 17 - Fuller Pilch

Chapter Seven Committed to East Anglia, for now The Bury Club agreed in 1829 that Fuller Pilch could play more frequently for Norfolk, the county of his birth, and developed closer links with the Club in Norwich. But as his fame spread he became the player the public wanted to see and all ‘gentlemen cricketers’ wanted to play with or against, and it was not long before Surrey and Kent came calling with attractive offers. His season had started unsuccessfully at Lord’s, first in the Married v Single match on 1 and 2 June and then three weeks later playing for the Players against the Gentlemen, where MCC were determined to reverse the usual result and make the game more competitive by employing two professionals, Lillywhite and Broadbridge, to strengthen the bowling for the Gentlemen. Fuller went for his first pair, out for nought twice to the fast round-arm bowling of Broadbridge. It is a credit to Fuller’s dedication that he was able to concentrate on the match in hand when frequently finding himself playing against new opponents one day and a week later joining them to play another team somewhere else. From 2 July until 7 August, Fuller played in six matches in five weeks, starting at Lord’s with Norfolk against MCC when he made a major contribution to his county’s victory by scoring an unbeaten 38 of the first innings total of 56. He then switched sides to play two games almost back-to-back for Suffolk against Norfolk. In the first, completed in one day on 13 July, he made 37 not out of Suffolk’s first innings 59 at Norwich but it was not enough to prevent a Norfolk victory by 17 runs. Suffolk won the return at Bury St Edmunds on 23 and 24 July and then went down to Lord’s to beat MCC by 15 runs on 27, 28 and 29 July. For the annual match between Bury and MCC on 3, 4 and 5 August, when the stakes had risen to 1,000 guineas, MCC decided to come to Bury strengthened by two professionals, Saunders and Searle. But it made no difference as Fuller top-scored in both Bury innings, 42 out of 111 in the first and 13 out of 66 in the second, and Bury won by 19 runs. The next day, five of the MCC team who had played against Bury went with Fuller to play with him for Norfolk at Dereham against a revised MCC team. Again Fuller top-scored in both innings with 30 out of 95 and an unbeaten 15 out of 48 while steering Norfolk to a six-wicket victory. During this marathon Fuller was on the winning side in five out of the six low-scoring games, contributing 237 runs out of the 804 runs made by whichever of the teams he was playing for, more than 30 per cent, and top scoring in seven of the twelve innings, although he never reached a half-century. 29