Lives in Cricket No 17 - Fuller Pilch

Chapter Twelve Town Malling and Mr Pickwick The year 1836 was the first that found Fuller fully resident in Kent and the beginning of a period when he played for an even greater number of teams than before. Apart from playing for his new employers, Town Malling, he appeared for Kent, England, MCC, The Players, Norfolk, The North, Nottingham, Benenden, and a Sussex club, Worth, at Crabbett Park. He began by following his previous pattern of playing the early games of the summer close to home by playing five games in his new home county of Kent by the beginning of August, broken by four trips up to Lord’s, including the first official North versus South match. From then onwards he went further afield to Leicester, Sheffield and Nottingham and a final appearance for Norfolk at Norwich, returning from time to time to Brighton and Kent. It would be another five years before Fuller went further north than St John’s Wood, confining his activities to Kent, Surrey and Sussex. But Fuller’s journeys in 1836 would be overshadowed by an announcement in the press that an account of another person’s ‘perambulations, perils, travels, adventures and sporting transactions’ would be published in monthly parts as ‘The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club’. Of particular interest to those that followed cricket was the appearance of Part Three in June, featuring the visit by Mr Pickwick and his companions to Manor Farm close to the Kent village of Dingley Dell and their attendance at a cricket match at the nearby town of Muggleton. From geographical clues it seems very likely that the author, Charles Dickens, had based his descriptions on a match he had witnessed at Town Malling before the arrival of Fuller Pilch, and an illustration in the book bears a great resemblance to views of the parish church from the cricket field. Indeed, Frederick Gale, writing of a ‘grand match’ at Town Malling, suggested that ‘the description of which town, if put on paper, would so strongly resemble Muggleton in “Pickwick”, that I have an idea that the real scene of the match between Muggleton and Dingley Dell may have been drawn from Town Malling.’ In common with most supporters wishing to attend any village match, Mr Pickwick and his friends set off in the afternoon on foot ‘to the spot, where was to be held that trial of skill, which had roused all Muggleton from its torpor and inoculated Dingley Dell with a fever of excitement.’ Their walk ‘which was not above two miles long, lay through shady lanes and sequestered footpaths’ and it was not long before they found themselves ‘in the main street.’ Describing the shops and services in the town, Dickens 49