Lives in Cricket No 17 - Fuller Pilch

Chapter Thirteen Kent become the greatest team in England Before Fuller Pilch started playing for Kent, they lost more than they won. After he joined the team in 1836 they won twice as many as they lost, until the decline that began in the early 1850s when age began to take its toll on the older players. But the transformation did not happen overnight. Kent, with Fuller Pilch, had played Sussex twice in his first season and lost both games. There was a complete turnaround after that and in the five years from 1837 to 1841 Kent beat Sussex in eight consecutive matches. During the same period they played in all a total of 20 matches and won 15 of them, including five defeats of England elevens at Lord’s and Town Malling. In those matches Fuller was the leading batsman for his new county, scoring 834 runs, including five half-centuries, with an average of 26.90. The next highest batsmen were Alfred Mynn with 343 runs, average 12.25, Ned Wenman with 304 runs, average 10.86, and Tom Adams 266 runs, average 8.09. Nearly half of Kent’s matches were played in front of huge crowds at Fuller Pilch’s Ground at Town Malling, with the team selected by the Thomas Selby consortium, with advice from Fuller. There is a description by Frederick Gale of what it was like to attend one of those ‘grand matches’: It is five o’clock in the morning, and after a restless night, from anxiety and excitement, we are off in a trap of some kind for a twenty-miles drive to the match; and, as we leave Rochester and get into the Malling road, we find no dearth of company, and the road is much like a Derby-day at an early hour, as the old hands know very well that if they mean to get any stabling they must be early. Nor are the pedestrians less numerous than the riders. We pass many a poor fellow on the tramp, who has started over-night, perhaps, to be on the ground in time to see the first over, and to witness with his own eyes the feats of the mighty men of whom he has heard so much. And what a sight it is in town! All the inns are full of customers; and though it is only nine o’clock in the morning the horses are obliged to be stabled outside, with a canvas awning over them. And then, what a babel of voices we hear, interspersed with the north country dialect; as in an all-England match, the north countrymen who played, had their followers, just as the Kentish yeomen assembled to support their eleven. Let us go to the ground, for it is ten o’clock, and the match will begin at eleven to a moment, and we must get a seat in a hop-wagon early, or stand in the sun all day. Here come a lot of the players with a crowd of friends following them, in the hopes of seeing a little practice before the match 55