Lives in Cricket No 17 - Fuller Pilch

the presence of an immense assemblage of spectators from the surrounding parts,’ according to the Cambridge Independent Press . Cambridgeshire repeated their earlier victory, thanks to Fuller’s top score of 28 out of 78 and taking six wickets. Two days later Fuller and Caldecourt played for Cambridge Town against MCC on Parker’s Piece in Cambridge and enjoyed a third victory. Fuller went back to Lord’s for the Gentlemen v Players challenge on 27 and 28 August when, in another unsuccessful attempt to make the game more competitive, the Gentlemen defended the smaller-size wicket that had been in use fifty years earlier before the MCC amended the Laws. This was Alfred Mynn’s first match at Lord’s and, although he could not prevent a Players’ victory by an innings and 34 runs, he did get Fuller out caught for only eleven runs. Two days later Fuller met Mynn again, but this time he was co-opted to join him in an attempt to strengthen the Leeds and Bearsted team against the powerful Dartford eleven, but they did not have enough time to finish the game which ended with Dartford seven wickets down but still eight runs short. Fuller remained in Kent for his last game of the summer when he went back to Chislehurst on 10 and 11 September to play in a twelve-a-side match between the Gentlemen of England plus Pilch, Lillywhite and Cobbett, against the Gentlemen of Kent, including Mynn and three professionals. Fuller top-scored with 32 out of 76 in the Gentlemen of England side’s first innings but the Gentlemen of Kent won by nine runs. Mynn did not take Fuller’s wicket as a bowler this time, but he did catch him in the second innings, probably in the slips, where Mynn was renowned for having a safe pair of hands, although Fuller believed he ‘didn’t need both’ and declared in ‘The Game of Cricket’: ‘one hand was good enough for Alfred, for his fist was about the size of a small shoulder of mutton.’ A year of indecision 35