Lives in Cricket No 24 - Edgar Willsher

15 Chapter Three The Big Time Those aficionados increasingly wearied by the ever-more congested modern fixture list will be relieved to learn that Kent played a mere six matches in 1850, three of them against England. The concept of a county championship was a long way off at this point in the game’s history, with only a few inter-county matches played each year, resulting in a ‘champion’ declared annually by the press. The Wealden counties of Kent, Surrey and Sussex dominated the scene, with only Nottinghamshire really challenging from the north. As it happened, the end of the 1840s coincided with the decline of the Kent side that can justly lay claim to being the greatest of all county elevens, the team immortalised in William Prowse’s famous tribute, first published in 1861: Every man of the Eleven glad and proud to play his part; And with five such mighty cricketers, ‘twas but natural to win As Felix, Wenman, Hillyer, Fuller Pilch and Alfred Mynn. 4 In addition to those already mentioned, Nicholas Wanostrocht, or ‘Felix’ as he liked to be known on the cricket field, was only marginally inferior to Pilch as a batsman, and was a great thinker on the game, as seen in his classic tome Felix on the Bat , where he describes the ingenious bowling machine he called the ‘catapulta’. Finally, William Martingell, an export from Surrey, provided excellent medium-paced support to Mynn and Hillyer. This mighty combination was more than a match for all-comers from the mid- 1830s to the end of the 1840s, and indeed Kent were acclaimed in the press as champion county six of the seven years between 1837 and 1843. (No reference has been found to a team being chosen in 1840.) By 1850, the team was ageing and in dire need of fresh blood. The time was ripe for young ‘Ned’ Willsher to be given his opportunity, and after impressing a crowd of 2,000 playing for Bearsted at the Beverley Club in Canterbury at the end of June, the call finally came. After a good start to the season, with a draw and a win against Sussex, it was decided to experiment for the 4 From his poem, In Memoriam, reproduced in Morrah, p.207 and elsewhere.