Lives in Cricket No 44 - LCH Palairet

Caught 233 (49 per cent) Bowled 192 (41pc) Caught and bowled 18 (4pc) Leg before wicket 13 (3pc) Run out 4 (1pc) Stumped 9 (2pc) His main mode of dismissal was caught. What is surprising is that for a front footed player he was only stumped nine times, so he must have been a good judge of when to advance to spinners. He was only run out four times, so must have been a good judge of a run. Sadly his last innings ended in a run out. He was dismissed most times, 19, by JT Hearne of Middlesex, a right-arm medium bowler; this was followed by (16) FG Roberts (Gloucestershire) a left-arm fast bowler. Other regular wicket takers were Johnny Briggs (14), slow left-arm and Tom Richardson (13), right-arm fast. It would appear that Lionel did not have a specific weakness to a type of bowling, though with the entries of Roberts and Briggs it is possible he found left-arm a little more testing that the more conventional right-arm type bowlers. His dominance though was in matches for Somerset. In 222 appearances he scored 13,851 runs at 35.79; this average was not beaten until Harold Gimblett who would finish with a slightly better career average of 36.96. Lionel’s 292 against Hampshire, in 1896, remained the county’s highest individual score until Gimblett scored 310 against Sussex in 1948. Lionel’s record of 27 centuries was not beaten until 1948, again by Gimblett, who also overtook Lionel’s aggregate of runs in 1949. Lionel’s’ Somerset record of carrying his bat through an innings four times has only been equalled once, by his colleague Len Braund. On six occasions Lionel scored a century before lunch, five of these in 1901; only Viv Richards has managed to equal his Somerset record. On three occasions he scored over 60 per cent Previous page, Somerset, 1904: Lionel seated second from left, next to Sam Woods His cricketing legacy 124