Lives in Cricket No 17 - Fuller Pilch

at Lord’s since 1831, against MCC on 25 and 26 July, with victory for the county largely due to Fuller’s 41, top score of the match; for the Players against the Gentlemen at Lord’s at the end of July; for Buckinghamshire v Berkshire at The Brocas at Eton and finally a longer trip west to Bath to play for the West of England. Kent’s season ended with disappointment in the Cricket Week, losing to England by 52 runs despite Fuller’s 13 out of 37 in Kent’s second innings in a match that, due to the weather, took four days to complete between 13 and 16 August. But despite the weather it was another occasion when the proximity of the cavalrymen to the cricket ground paid dividends. Fred Gale described, in The Game of Cricket , the increase in fashionable ladies attending matches in Canterbury: ‘The ladies look very charming when they walk about the ground between the innings, and the playing space is not curtained in any way, as the officers are kind enough to pitch their tents and keep the fair sex amused out of the way of the bowler’s arm, and cricket is no way sacrificed to fashion.’ Then it was time for Fuller to take a short tour with MCC to play Sussex at Brighton on 19, 20 and 21 August, where 830 runs were scored in three days. Scores and Biographies thought this ‘the largest number of runs that had been as yet made since the introduction of round-armed bowling.’ 10 Fuller then went to play in the inaugural match at the New Ground adjoining Petworth Park in Sussex on 22 and 23 August, between Petworth and MCC, sponsored by Lord Winterton, and then made a longer journey to Leicester for the return match against The North on 26 and 27 August. Only two days later he was down at Southampton, to play with Mynn and Box for Hampshire against MCC, where his first innings score of 33 out of 107 kept them in the match so that they could go on to win by five wickets with Fuller making the winning hit. Then it had been time to go back up to Norfolk for the return match at Swaffham against MCC on 5 and 6 September. Fuller then travelled to Nottingham to play for the Gentlemen of Nottingham with Mynn against the Players of Nottinghamshire on 9, 10 and 11 September, where Fuller’s 50 in the first innings was top score of the match, while he avoided being one of Redgate‘s seven victims. It seems that Fuller had quickly learned how to use the advantages of the new railway system because only twenty-four hours later he walked on to the Racecourse Ground at Tunbridge Wells in Kent to play in a Married v Single match put on for the benefit of all the professionals. Perhaps this frenzy of travel back and forth between north and south, east and west, had disagreed with Pilch after all, because Scores and Biographies recorded ‘Pilch was very unwell in this match.’ William Martingell joins Fuller at Canterbury 84 10 A total of 851 runs were scored over five days in the ‘incomplete’ match between Yorkshire and Norfolk at Sheffield in July 1834, referred to in Chapter Eleven.