Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

67 No-ball! Born in the inner-city suburb of Collingwood just north of the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 24 June 1879, Pitcher batted and bowled right-handed, the latter at medium pace. He must have risen through the junior ranks in cricket in his home city, but the earliest details we have of his cricket come in the 1907/08 season, in the latter part of which he became a regular in the first eleven of the Collingwood club. Senior local cricket in Melbourne had been reorganised the previous season with the introduction of a new system of ‘District Cricket’, and the then newly-created Collingwood club was one of the 12 founder members of the new structure. Pitcher made his first appearance for the club in December 1907, and notwithstanding the events of February 1911 which bring him to notice here, he held his place as a regular in their first team right up to the First World War. From the start he showed promise with both bat and ball, ending his first club season with 159 runs at 22.79 and 11 wickets at 18.90, all from just seven matches. He was to better his season’s best score of 37 only twice in his remaining 60 matches for the club, but his bowling record improved apace. In his second season he scored only 96 runs in 11 matches, at an average of 9.60, but he more than doubled his wickets tally, finishing the season with 23 wickets at 20.68, including his first ‘five-for’ which came when he took five for 68 against Prahran in one of the last matches of the season, in March 1909. It was his third season, 1909/10, that really brought Frank Pitcher to notice. Two scores in the 30s were the highlights of his batting, but with the ball he very nearly emulated his previous season’s performance by almost doubling his wickets tally. In all he took 45 wickets in ten matches at an average of 14.51, including innings returns of five for 88 against Prahran and seven for 28 against South Melbourne in successive matches in January-February, and ending the season in March with returns of seven for 38 and five for 52 in the match against Richmond. 44 Although his most successful performances had come after the Christmas break (prior to which he had taken just 14 wickets at 13.92 in five matches), he had already caught the eye of the Victoria state selectors. A Victorian team was due to tour up- country between Christmas and New Year, and although Pitcher was not named in the original squad selected by Percy McAlister for the tour in mid-December, he was included in the much-changed final squad for the matches at Bendigo and Castlemaine. Considering that the state’s first eleven was playing a Sheffield Shield match against New South Wales at the MCG at the same time, the side picked for this tour was still a strong 44 District matches were played on two successive Saturdays, nominally over two innings per side. But as often as not they were decided on first innings, and bowlers didn’t always get two full innings in which to bowl. Frank Pitcher of Collingwood.