Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

68 No-ball! one. All 12 of those selected had already played, or would play, cricket at first-class level; indeed, all but two of them had done so by the end of this 1909/10 season. 45 So this was no mere squad of young hopefuls, but was probably not far short of being a genuine state second eleven at the time. For Pitcher to be included in the tour party indicated clearly that the selectors must have thought that he could well have a decent first-class career ahead of him. After a shaky start, his tour didn’t go too badly at all. With the bat, and batting at number nine of 12, he managed the only Victorian duck of the two-day victory over Bendigo, but his bowling figures of one for 12, as the fifth bowler tried, were no disgrace. This match had started on the afternoon of Christmas Day, a Saturday, and was concluded on the following Monday; then it was time to head south for the one-day match against a Castlemaine XV on the 28th, which ended in a draw that strongly favoured the visitors (Victoria XII 321, Pitcher scoring six at number seven; Castlemaine XV 114 for 11). One version of the scorecard of this match in the contemporary newspapers gives Pitcher, bowling as first change, figures of two for 10 in the Castlemaine innings, while another gives him three for 10. Newspaper reports make no specific mention of his performances in either match, but at least from the figures - whatever they may have been at Castlemaine - he and the selectors could surely be satisfied with his first venture into State cricket. And so the rest of the 1909/10 season played out as already described. His 45 wickets was the most by any bowler in the District competition that season, and there seemed no reason to doubt that even better things may have awaited him in 1910/11. He began with five for 82 against Richmond, and had 13 wickets by Christmas. Victoria had no up-country tour over this festive season, and so Pitcher was not back into action until the New Year, which he started with a return of seven for 46 against South Melbourne in a match beginning on 7 January. The latter match also brought him the only half-century of his District career, a score of 64 - the top score in an innings total of 281. He was batting at number seven, and made his runs in 100 minutes with six fours, in an effort described by The Age as “the innings of the afternoon”. There was one downside, though: some fallibility in the field was noted in reports of this match, The Age noting that he dropped two catches at mid off in the South Melbourne innings, though there was immediate partial redemption as the batsmen’s uncertainty during one of the drops led to a run-out. He may well have been close to selection for Victoria’s non-Sheffield Shield match against Queensland beginning on 16 December, but the place that might have been his went instead to Leslie Miller, a left-arm bowler from the Richmond club. At the end of January the state selectors had to pick a 45 Nine of the 12 had played, or would play, a total of 86 Sheffield Shield matches (or equivalent matches against ‘senior’ states) between them; the other three, including Pitcher, only ever played in first-class friendlies against states that did not participate in the Shield competition at the time, or against touring Test elevens.