Lives in Cricket No 17 - Fuller Pilch

from the boxes, pit, and gallery. Last night, there was to be a fancy dress ball at Barnes’ Assembly Rooms where, it was expected, several splendid ‘tableaux’ would be formed, not, perhaps, equalling those at Her Majesty’s ball, but full of taste and elegance, no doubt. At the Palace Gardens, exhibitions of fireworks have taken place: so that, altogether, what with the ‘Cricket Week’, and the ‘Race Week’, which is to follow, Canterbury will have a fortnight of gaiety, worthy of her best days. There was a crowd of 3,000 on the Beverley new ground on the first morning to see Kent win the toss and start batting. Fuller went in after two wickets had fallen, but Walter Mynn went next at 39 for three. Now Nicholas Felix joined Fuller; Bell’s Life said they ‘commenced such a style of hitting and fine play that we never on any previous occasion had the felicity of witnessing.’ The pair put on 154 runs before Felix was caught at the wicket for 74. At close of play Kent were 237 for four with Fuller, ‘at the top of his form’, not out on 98. The scene was set the following morning, when another big crowd gathered early to celebrate the completion of an historic century, but he was out almost immediately, caught by Dean off Lillywhite, without adding to his score. Kent collapsed after that, although their final total of 278 was expected to be more than enough to win the game. Years later though, Fuller remembered, for Fred Gale’s The Game of Cricket , the confidence of their supporters: ‘one of the Kentish farmers offered thirty pounds to one on Kent, and an officer at Canterbury took him four times over.’ But there were still plenty of runs left in the Beverley wicket and when Kent came to bat again, they had a lead of only 12 runs. Lillywhite took advantage of some poor batting, only Emilius Bayley reaching double figures in Kent’s total of 44, and England went on to win by nine wickets. Fuller sadly recalled the disappointment of the unlucky cavalry officer who had lost his wager: ‘Old “top boots” did sigh when he went home for his canvas bag to pay up.’ In the second half of the week the Gentlemen of Kent avenged the county’s earlier defeat by beating the Gentlemen of England by 173 runs. This was a strictly amateur match with no professionals permitted on either side, so Fuller was able to take an unusual week off at the height of the season, perhaps to enjoy some of the entertainments provided during the evenings of match days at the theatre in Orange Street. Sheridan’s play The Rivals may have appealed to him or Colman’s The Poor Gentleman , where important parts were filled by some well-known actresses alongside the amateur gentlemen. But it is anyone’s guess what he would have made of the burlesque Othello Travestie ‘being the most excruciating Comical Operatic Tragedy by any Comical and Pastoral Company of Tragedical Tragedians’ where all the parts, both male and female were taken by amateurs, many of them players in both matches, with Charles Taylor, the noted Sussex batsman, as ‘Desdemona (a striking beauty)’ supported by a band conducted by Nicholas Felix. The birth of Canterbury Cricket Week 77