Lives in Cricket No 44 - LCH Palairet

Stanley, both Palairets were together and they soon mastered the bowling, adding 149 in only an hour and three quarters, before Richard fell for 50. Lionel went shortly afterwards for a brilliant century, his fourth of the season. With Roe also hitting a century the county amassed 457. Again, despite making Surrey follow on, Somerset were unable to make inroads in the Surrey’s second innings. The season finished with Somerset joint bottom with Leicestershire; this was the first time the county had suffered this (and it would not be the last). With the mix of good weather in August and some washouts earlier in the season, many games were drawn. Of the 16 games Somerset had drawn ten. Nottinghamshire drew 13 games out of sixteen, winning only one, yet were nearly mid table, showing the flaw of the method of deciding the Championship. Wisden put down Somerset’s failures in the season to ‘faulty fielding and lack of penetration to bowl teams out twice’. This is borne out in many results when Somerset put themselves into a good position but let it slip. For Somerset Lionel had a brilliant season; in Championship games alone he scored 1,028 runs at 44.60. The problem was the bowling. Tyler took 83 wickets at 24.56 in the Championship but the next best was Robson with 38. Gill bowled well at times but was expensive and Cranfield was not called into the team all season. The season for Lionel was not quite over yet; he was invited to play in the Scarborough festival which started on August 29. In the first match he played for the Gentlemen against the Players. After dismissing the Players for 126, Lionel opened with Lord Hawke. He would go on to score 54 out of 85. This would be the last time he played in this representative match. He would score 15 in the second innings as his team easily won by eight wickets. In the six games he played for the Gentlemen, he only scored 235 runs at 19.58, only once reaching fifty. It would seem that the authorities thought of him as not quite being up to Test level, and his appearances for representative matches statistics would seem to bear this out. However as work and family commitments were now starting to affect his frequency of appearances, I think he was not that concerned about playing at the highest level; his Marriage, family, work and Somerset 60