Lives in Cricket No 17 - Fuller Pilch

Their first game together was a Club and Ground fixture for Beverley, now called the Kent Club, against the South London Club at the Beehive Ground in Walworth on 27 May, when William impressed with his bowling taking six wickets. Another player to impress was the young amateur Frederick Gale whose 33 not out in Kent Club’s first innings was the highest individual score of the match. This was the same Frederick Gale who many years later would be the author of The Game of Cricket in which he wrote: ‘I knew Fuller Pilch very well from the year 1845, when he coached us at the Beverley Ground at Canterbury’, and described the sessions: Once and oftener twice a week we had a practice wicket and two professional bowlers from four o’clock till dark. The nominal price was 7/6d, but with odds and ends it amounted, perhaps, to 12/-. Any rising amateurs or lads of the village could try their hands at bowling under the direction of a professional, with sixpence on the wicket for the village lads, and at fielding at such places as short-slip, point, mid-off, etc. We generally got three gentlemen to come, so it cost about 4/- apiece, and we had a real enjoyable cricket afternoon - for it was strict practice, and furnished us with recruits when there was a vacancy in a good match. When it came to organising the Beverley Club matches, Gale also remembered that Fuller knew ways of earning a little extra bonus: He used to make the match and captain the eleven; that is, he would tell us that a regiment or club wanted a match, and would play the Beverley if he could get an eleven to go, and recruits came in quick enough, and most charming matches they were. Sometimes there were off-hand matches at home, commencing at 2 o’clock, and there was no dinner, but simply a booth with sandwiches, bread and cheese, and a bit of cold beef for any who wanted it; but the cricket was real and true, and we had the old-fashioned six-ball overs in these matches; and every match with Pilch as captain was a lesson. On one grand occasion Fuller dropped an easy catch, and remarked in his dry way, ‘I dropped her A-PURPOSE to teach you young gentlemen that cricket is a game of chance, I thought, LIKEWISE, as it is now September, that Mr Blank [whom he had missed] might send me some birds or a hare in hopes I might drop him another time.’ Gale had a taste of top-class cricket when he made his debut for the full Kent eleven a month later but was dismissed for nought and never played for the county again. 11 William Pilch, on the other hand, made his full debut for Kent that summer when he and his uncle travelled to Nottingham together, and he would eventually earn a regular place for the next twelve years. William Pilch joins Uncle Fuller at Canterbury 86 11 Gale played for the Gentlemen of Kent at Lord’s later in the season in a match now also recognised by ACS as first-class. Batting in the tail, he scored 13 and 0. His average in his two first-class matches was thus 4.33; he did not bowl. A better writer than player, you might say. The Wisden almanack of 1905 gave him a fulsome obituary of some 400 words.