Lives in Cricket No 17 - Fuller Pilch

begins. Those two tall men are Alfred Mynn and Wenman, and the short man who has already begun to chaff Lillywhite is Mr Felix. Fuller Pilch and Joseph Guy of Nottingham, who are rivals for the honour of being the best batsmen in England, are walking side by side; and you can tell Pilch by his hands being crossed behind his back and a slight stoop in his gait. Joseph Guy had made his debut for Nottinghamshire in 1837 and at Lord’s the following year, playing for the North against the South, he was described in Scores and Biographies as ‘a fine, upright, and scientific batsman, very forward in style, and could cut to the off and hit to the leg in a brilliant manner.’ William Clarke said, famously, in The Elevens of England that he was ‘all ease and elegance, fit to play before Her Majesty in a drawing-room.’ The left-handed Nicholas Felix made his debut for Kent in 1834 and would soon establish himself as the most brilliant amateur batsman in England. Statistically though, neither Guy nor Felix could rival the success of Fuller Pilch. During that five-year period 1837 to 1841, Fuller Pilch continued to play for a variety of teams and clubs as well as Town Malling and Kent, and was the leading batsman in England for four of those five seasons, overtaken only once by Felix in 1840. According to the statistics compiled by Keith Warsop for his article in The Cricket Quarterly mentioned earlier, the figures were in 1837, 544 runs, average 32.00; in 1838, 486 runs, average 22.09; in 1839, 624 runs, average 25.14; in 1840, 500 runs, average 19.23 (second to Felix who scored 203 runs, average 22.55); and in 1841, 618 runs, average 24.72. My own more recent research shows that Fuller scored 521 runs in 1840 with a lower average of 17.37. The 1837 season started well for Fuller on 12 and 13 June at Town Malling with 44 out of 103 in Kent’s first innings and, although he was bowled by Lillywhite for nought in the second, Kent beat Sussex by two wickets. Huge numbers of spectators were on the ground, at least 10,000 each day, and many wagers were made as the game progressed. Not everyone in West Malling welcomed the invasion by so many outsiders and the following Sunday the vicar preached against the game of cricket that brought the evils of gambling into his parish. Kent become the greatest team in England 56 An early printing of the verse by W.J.Prowse recording Kent’s primacy. The press recorded Kent as ‘champion county’ in six of the seven seasons from 1837 to 1843.