Lives in Cricket No 17 - Fuller Pilch

ten wickets after some fine batting from Fuller with 60 and Mynn with 61. Bell’s Life said of the pair that they batted ‘in a style the most superb possible, and while they beat the best balls down, they punished most severely the wide ones.’ Then it was back south for one more game for Kent, at Bromley, against England on 25, 26 and 27 August; then another engagement for Sussex at Brighton against England, in a match played for the benefit of William Lillywhite on 29, 30 and 31 August. While they were in Sussex some of the England and Sussex players, including Fuller, took the opportunity to play some village cricket as given men for Midhurst and Duncton as well as moving further along the coast to Southampton to play in the Hampshire and England match on 5 and 6 September. Hampshire had no regular county side at this time and despite being aided by five England players, Lillywhite, Wenman, Barker, Guy and Fuller Pilch (who top-scored with 19 out of 67 in the first innings), they lost by an innings and five runs. There was still time for two more games in Sussex when Earl Winterton engaged Fuller and some of his travelling companions to play for him at Shillinglee Park, a landed estate in the High Weald of West Sussex, against Brighton. Fuller made top score of 36 out of Shillinglee’s second innings total of 83 to set up a victory that was denied by bad weather in the first match on 12 and 13 September. In the return, at Brighton a few days later, Fuller top-scored again with 53 out of 114 but bad weather again prevented a result. 80 The birth of Canterbury Cricket Week