“A better display of the art of cricket was never witnessed”: How Fuller Pilch became the best batter in the world

Fuller Pilch (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

In discussions of who might have been the greatest or most influential cricketers of all time, there is a tendency to favour more recent players. Most critics understandably nominate those who they have seen in person, although an exception is usually made for the inevitable Don Bradman, whose statistical dominance makes him a special case. Perhaps one or two players from earlier periods, for whom there is plenty of film available (preferably on Youtube), might warrant a mention but once discussion moves further back than living memory, former stars are usually neglected, usually accompanied by assertions that cricketers from so long ago cannot possibly have been as good as their modern counterparts. This phenomenon is intensified by the lack of statistical detail available for comparison, and a suspicion that — depending on the viewpoint of whoever is judging — it must have been easier to score runs or take wickets back in the dim and distant past. One or two aficionados might buck the trend and name older players such as Walter Hammond, Jack Hobbs or Victor Trumper, but for most cricket followers these are at best just names that they have heard. And then there is the case of someone like Ranjitsinhji, recorded by the history books as the inventor of the leg-glance (but who is perhaps even more interesting for his adventures off the field). Or what about W. G. Grace? To those familiar with cricket history, he might stand comparison with Bradman: the man who invented modern batting, combining forward play, back play, attack and defence. But if we go back even further, cricket was a very different game on (and off) the field, so that any hope of statistical comparison breaks down hopelessly. Which is unfortunate because if we continue backwards, we come across names that were legends for a century after their playing days were over.

Standing at the head of this semi-legendary list was Fuller Pilch, perhaps the most famous batter before the emergence of W. G. Grace. During his playing days, there was a general consensus that Pilch was the best batter in England — and therefore the world. While never achieving the statistical dominance of those who followed — for example Grace, Ranjitsinhji, Hobbs, Hammond — any impartial assessment has to place Pilch among those names because of what he achieved at a time when batting was often little more than a lottery. When Grace emerged, it was with Pilch that he was most often compared in trying to decide who was the greatest; and not everyone agreed that Grace was better than Pilch. And across the vast span of time between the end of Pilch’s career in 1854 and the modern day, one of his batting innovations has survived and continues to be one of the foundations of the game.

Before delving too deeply into Pilch’s story, it is worth establishing how very different cricket was when he was at his peak in the 1830s and 1840s. Cricket was played irregularly and few county teams even existed; there were no competitions or cups or championships and fixtures were arranged on an ad hoc basis with no real central authority to coordinate them. Test cricket was years away. Many games were played, especially at the major venues such as Lord’s, between what were little more than scratch teams. Part of the problem was that, at a time before the railway network had become fully established, transporting teams across the country was simply uneconomical. Single-wicket matches were still extremely popular, and followed closely by the press and public. While there were amateur and professional cricketers (Pilch was a professional), the distinction was less pronounced than it became; later generations of amateurs were more eager to keep professionals in their place, but in Pilch’s time the relationship was more benevolent. He described it: “Gentlemen were gentlemen, and players much in the same position as a nobleman and his head keeper maybe.” And the concept of what today would be called first-class cricket was largely unknown, although there was a sense that some matches were more important than others.

On the field, it was a similarly different game. When Pilch first played at Lord’s in 1820, the only legal form of bowling was underarm. Although “round-arm” bowling — in which the ball could be released from shoulder height — was widely used and became very effective, it was not officially permitted until 1835. Few, if any, batters used pads or gloves and on the field, long-stop was an essential position. The science of tending to pitches was almost unknown, and therefore the wickets were rough and untamed: the ball bounced unevenly (shooters were common) and could rise sharply if it struck the stones which were found in many playing surfaces. For bowlers who spun the ball, there was a huge amount of help from the pitch. Furthermore, games were generally played without a boundary — all hits were run out, with no fours or sixes. There might have been exceptions; during Pilch’s benefit match in 1839, wagons were used to enclose the ground, but we do not know if hits beyond this point counted as extra runs. But one contemporary critic said that “Pilch played cricket, W. G. plays boundary”. In these circumstances, run-scoring was incredibly challenging; reaching double figures was an achievement and scores of 20 were perhaps as valuable as a century in modern cricket. And the development of round-arm (which gradually metamorphosed into over-arm) bowling was even more of a challenge; the big scores that had begun to accumulate before 1820 against simply lob-bowling disappeared and did not reappear until the time of Grace. Cricket had become a low-scoring game, and the surviving statistics reflect this. Those who later championed the claims of Pilch as one of the best ever were quick to remind audiences how difficult it was to score back in the 1830s and 1840s.

This, therefore, was the cricket world into which Pilch emerged and established himself as the best; alongside Nicholas Felix and Alfred Mynn, he became one of the few household names who played the sport. How did he reach that peak?

Fuller Pilch was born on 17th March 1804, at Horningtoft in Norfolk. He was the seventh (not the youngest as has often been claimed) child of Nathaniel Pilch (a tailor) and Frances Fuller (who was the widowed Nathaniel’s second wife). Records are scarce from so long ago — individuals were not recorded on the census until Pilch was 37 — and so there is much that we do not know. But Pilch’s later fame meant that some details were recorded; he and his two older brothers (the only three out of Nathaniel and Frances’ five sons to survive until adulthood) William and Nathanial followed their father’s trade, becoming tailors. However all three proved to be good cricketers as well. There are suggestions — based on one questionable newspaper report — that Pilch spent time working in Sheffield as a young man, and learned cricket there, but it is perhaps more likely that he played village cricket in Norfolk.

There are more plausible claims that Pilch was coached by William Fennex, one of the Hambledon stars from the period in the late eighteenth century when cricket’s popularity first exploded, and one of the first men to use what would today be known as forward play; Fennex himself claimed to have taught Pilch how to bat. The author Frederick Gale wrote in 1883: “Fennex, be it remembered that he inaugurated the free forward play, and taught it to Fuller Pilch, and Fuller Pilch taught the world; for I feel confident, in my own mind, that all the fine forward play which one sees now sometimes, is simply the reflex of what Fuller Pilch developed in a manner which has never been surpassed by any living man (except W. G. [Grace]), and that, too, in days when grounds were less true, and pads and gloves were unknown. And I say of my friend W. G., that he has simply perfected the art which Pilch taught, though Pilch was never such an all-round man as our present champion.” We shall return to Pilch’s pioneering forward play later.

As Pilch improved as a cricketer, he was selected to play for Norfolk — in reality at that time little more than the Holt Cricket Club — and he made his debut in “big cricket” when he played for Norfolk against the MCC at Lord’s in 1820. Pilch was just seventeen at the time, and played alongside his brothers Nathaniel and Francis. But the three fielded while William Ward scored 278 runs, the highest innings in what would today be called first-class cricket until W. G. Grace scored 344 in 1876. Pilch, at that time picked as much for his under-arm bowling as his batting, scored 0 and 2 as the MCC won by 417 runs. But for modern statisticians, this was his first-class debut, even though no-one would have had any notion of what that meant at the time.

Fuller Pilch in 1852 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

The irregular and disorganised nature of cricket at this time mean that it is hard to track Pilch’s career in terms of statistical achievements. But he gradually became a more accomplished batter even though he did not play anything else recognised today as “first-class” until 1827. In 1823, he moved to Bury St Edmonds, and from 1825 to 1828, he played as a professional for Bury Cricket Club — his first century was scored for the club against Woodbridge in 1830 — and represented Suffolk. In this period he made some substantial scores and was selected for the Gentlemen v Players match for the first time in 1827. That year, he also played for a team styled “England” against Sussex in a series of three matches intended as a trial of the fairness of the new style of “round-arm” bowling (used by Sussex in those matches) and top-scored in the first game with 38. He did not stand out in the other games and, with several other “England” players threatened to pull out of the final game unless the Sussex bowlers reverted to underarm, before ultimately agreeing to play. But Pilch quickly learned to face the new style of bowling, adopted it himself, and when asked in later years about what it was like facing the old underarm style, replied: “Gentlemen, I think you might put me in on Monday morning and get me out by Saturday night”.

Pilch moved to Norwich in 1829, becoming the landlord of the Anchor of Hope Inn, and began to play for Norfolk, which was established on a more formal basis in 1827. Within a few years, it was one of the strongest teams in England, not least owing to Pilch’s batting. And in 1833, he became famous through two single-wicket matches against Tom Marsden, the “Champion” of England. Single-wicket was a highly popular form of the game at the time and was played under various rule. The main versions involved two players opposing each other without assistance in the field. Hits behind the wicket did not count, and batters had to run to the other end of the pitch and back to score a single run. Pilch comfortably won the two matches: in the first, played at Norwich, he won after dismissing Marsden for seven, hitting 73 runs himself and then bowling Marsden seventh ball for a duck, winning by an innings. In the return match at Sheffield, before 12,000 spectators, Pilch scored 78, to which Marsden could only reply with 25. Pilch hit 102 and facing an impossible task, Marsden was dismissed for 31. Just over ten years later, William Denison said of this game: “Pilch’s batting was of the finest description, and a better display of the art of cricket was never witnessed in any former match.” The contest was a huge attraction and received a great deal of press coverage. But for all his success, Pilch disliked single wicket matches and rarely took part: he turned down several opportunities (he and Alfred Mynn seem to have actively avoided facing each other in that format) and only seems to have played one other game (in 1845).

In other cricket, Pilch’s fame grew and there were hardly any big matches in which he did not feature. He played for Cambridge Town, “England”, the MCC, Norfolk, the Players, Suffolk and Surrey, and as a given man for the Gentlemen. He also featured in several of the “novelty” teams which were popular at the time, such as for the Single against the Married or the Right-handed against Left-handed. Perhaps his greatest year came in 1834. In two games for Norfolk against Yorkshire, he scored 87 not out, and 73 and 153 not out; he also scored 105 not out for England against Sussex and 60 for the Players against the Gentlemen. According to Gerald Howat (in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), “his aggregate of 811 runs in major matches was not surpassed for twenty-seven years.” Such considerations were meaningless in 1834 — batting averages were not widely published, if at all — but his average of 43 in those games dwarfed the next best, which was only 18. And in matches retrospectively reckoned first-class, he scored 551 runs at 61.22. But perhaps more importantly he had reached three figures in “major matches” for the first time, in a period when such feats were a rarity.

By then probably the best batter in the world, Pilch was in considerable demand and Norfolk could not hold on to him. A Kent county team — the second such attempt — was founded in Town Malling by a pair of lawyers called Thomas Selby and Silas Norton. After the 1835 season, they persuaded Pilch to move to Town Malling in return for £100 per year, for which he would play for Kent and manage the cricket ground. He made his Kent debut in 1836 and remained with the county until 1854, during which period he was a key figure in making it the strongest team in England. Perhaps its most powerful opposition came from another of Pilch’s teams: William Clarke’s professional touring side, the All-England Eleven. Clarke’s team made a huge impact on English cricket, and Pilch was a founding member, playing for the Eleven from 1846 until 1852. He played at least 65 matches for the Clarke’s Eleven, usually in games played “against the odds” (i.e. against teams featuring more than eleven players, to make the game competitive), and scored four half-centuries. But Pilch was not limited to playing for these teams. At a time when county cricket was an unregulated free-for-all, Pilch also made appearances for Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex. He was also a dominant figure in club cricket; he named his innings of 160 for Town Malling against Reigate in 1837 as one of his best.

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A scorecard showing Pilch’s innings of 60 for All-England against Nottingham in 1842

While Pilch was an undoubted success on the pitch — for example, he was the Kent’s leading scorer in twelve out of nineteen seasons — he did not play regularly because Kent, like all county teams in this period, only rarely took the field. And his statistical achievements have been utterly dwarfed by the inflation in scores that took place in the later part of the nineteenth century; to a modern audience, his average looks poor but at the time, given the challenges of batting, it was a different story. His record surpassed that of any of his contemporaries. He scored eleven fifties for Kent in 84 matches today reckoned first-class, with a highest score of 98, and his average of 19.61 was very good for the time. Of these matches, 36 were played against a team styled as England, which contained many of the best players: in these games, he scored four fifties and averaged 18.15. And in the Gentlemen v Players match, which was the highest form of representative cricket in England in the days before Test matches, he played 23 matches — 21 for the Players (the professional team) and two as a “given man” for the Gentlemen (the amateur team) to make the match more competitive — and averaged 14.90. As a point of contrast, he was easily the dominant batter for Kent in this period. Of his contemporaries to score 1,000 runs for the county, none approached his average: Tom Adams had 2,291 runs at 12.58; Nicholas Felix scored 1,528 runs at 16.79; and Ned Wenman had 1,063 runs at 10.42.

Hidden among the fragmented and hard-to-process figures, Pilch was remarkably consistent. It was a matter of some note that in 1836, he reached double figures in 13 innings (five of which surpassed 20); and in 1841 he reached double figures 16 times (not all of which are today judged as first-class) within which were two scores in the 20s, two in the 30s, three in the 40s and one in the 60s. In his Sketches of the Players (1844), William Denison listed many of these achievements, and wrote of Pilch: “But there are other seasons wherein Pilch has outshone all his competitors, and were they to be enumerated, it would be be to extend this publication to a size far beyond that of a ‘sketch’.” He also stated: “As a bat, [Pilch] has been one of the brightest luminaries of the cricket world, during the last 20 years.” In short, there was little doubt of Pilch’s class and superiority; he was quite simply the best batter who had played until then.

This was a precarious time for county clubs and several teams flitted in and out of existence. Kent was no exception: the Town Malling incarnation of the club struggled financially and collapsed in 1841. But Pilch maintained his Kent contention. When the brothers John and William Baker, the founders of the Beverley Club at Canterbury, took over the organisation of Kent teams in 1842 (when their club effectively assumed the role of the county team), they appointed Pilch as the manager of the Beverley Ground. When the proto-Kent team moved to the St Lawrence Ground in 1847, Pilch again moved with them, taking charge of that ground too. There are a few other traces of his life around this time. Despite claims by Denison, there is little evidence that Pilch ran a public house in Town Malling. Instead, he seems to have worked as a tailor in cricket’s off-season; this was the occupation recorded on the 1841 census (which was taken when he and the Kent team were staying at The Bear in Lewes, during a match against Sussex).

For all of Pilch’s later claims — such as the Kent team being a “eleven brothers’, or that “as soon as a man had been 12 months among the cherry orchards, hop gardens and pretty girls, he could not help becoming Kentish to the backbone” — his loyalty to Kent perhaps owed more to finance than emotion. After being awarded a benefit match — the lucrative Kent v England game in 1839 — he accepted an offer (“too good to refuse”) from Sussex to move county; it required the intervention of some of Kent’s wealthier patrons to persuade Pilch to remain where he was.

Pilch played on until 1855, when he was 52 — he later admitted that he and several of his team-mates kept going too long, meaning that Kent declined in the 1850s — having spent 35 years playing at what then was the top level. In terms of what is today judged as first-class games, Pilch scored 7,147 runs at 18.61, including three centuries and 24 fifties. He also took 142 wickets (although analyses do not survive for most of these). But it was noted at the time that he had scored ten centuries in total, a remarkable number for the time; he was also reckoned to have appeared 103 times at Lord’s.

The Saracen’s Head in Canterbury, photographed around 1945; the building was demolished in 1969 (Image: Dover Kent Archives)

Pilch continued to play minor cricket for one more season, appearing for the Beverley Club in Canterbury, and then from 1856 until 1866 concentrated on umpiring: in this period, he stood in 28 matches today reckoned first-class, almost all of which were played in Canterbury (although he had no great reputation as an umpire). He also had other cricketing interests. He began to work as a bat manufacturer — his occupation as given on the 1851 census — and continued as what would today be termed the head groundsman of the St Lawrence Ground until 1867. This was not the only ground with which he was associated. In 1849–50, he went into partnership with Edward Martin, another Kent cricketer, and developed the Prince of Wales Ground in Oxford, where he undertook winter coaching. This business partnership ended in 1855, at which point Pilch began another partnership with his nephew William Pilch, in whose house he was living in 1851. The pair became joint licensees of a Canterbury public house called the Saracen’s Head. It is not quite clear how the responsibility was split: the proprietors were often given as “F. and W. Pilch”, but William was sometimes named alone, and was listed as the head of the household on the 1861 census. From the little evidence that survives, William looks to have been the primary licensee. For example, on the 1861 census when Pilch was living at the Saracen’s Head with his nephew, William was listed as an innkeeper employing three male and three female servants; Pilch by contrast gave his occupation as a cricketer.

This particular business scheme was destined to end badly. William continued to run the Saracen’s Head for most of the 1860s but drifted into growing financial strife. Part of the problem was the new railway station that had been built in Canterbury; whereas the Pilches had previously enjoyed the custom of people (such as farmers) who would stay overnight in their establishment, the growth of the railways made this unnecessary as journeys could be made more quickly with no need for overnight accommodation. As a result, the Saracen’s Head lost valuable business. But there was also something of a financial crisis at the time that affected many small businesses after a leading bank in London collapsed. It was probably a combination of these factors that led to William’s ruin: in 1868 he was imprisoned for debt and declared bankrupt the following year, owing his creditors almost £700. By then, Pilch’s health was bad and he had been forced to give up his work as groundsman. His friends seemed to think that the problems over money with the Saracen’s Head had a negative effect on him; more than one report stated that it had been Pilch himself who had been declared bankrupt. Frederick Gale for example wrote in The Game of Cricket (1888): “The last time I saw Fuller Pilch was a few months before his bankruptcy, which, I believe, killed him. The world did not prosper with him as it ought, and he was out of spirits, and got so excited about the old times that I had to drop the subject.”

Pilch’s failing health — he was suffering from rheumatism — forced him to give up work and money became a struggle, especially with the problems faced by his nephew. Some Kent supporters arranged a subscription which it was hoped would provide him with a pension, but it fell short of expectations; some wealthy patrons had to top up the fund to provide him with an income of one pound per week. In April 1870, Pilch’s health took a turn for the worse. On 1 May 1870, he died at William’s home on Lower Bridge Street in Canterbury from what was then known as dropsy but would today be called fluid retention (or oedema); the actual cause was perhaps most likely to be heart failure. As a mark of the respect in which Pilch was held, a collection was taken among the public, the proceeds of which were used for a memorial. An obelisk was placed over his grave at St Gregory’s Church, which was moved to the St Lawrence ground in 1978 after the church had fallen into disuse. In 2008, Pilch returned to the news when plans by Christ Church University to redevelop the site of St Gregory’s were paused after it became clear that no-one was sure where Pilch was buried. An old photograph of the memorial eventually cleared up the mystery, and work went ahead; a new headstone was placed to mark the approximate location of Pilch’s grave.

The original memorial to Pilch in St Gregory’s churchyard, Canterbury, in the 1950s (Image: Kent Online)

So much for the facts. It is perhaps not as complete a story as we would like, nor could it ever be as detailed as a biography of Grace or Ranjitsinhji or Hobbs because it was plainly a very different world for cricketers of Pilch’s time. It is not possible to simply go through each season and note his scores in the biggest games or reel off impressive aggregates and averages. And yet there was no doubt among Pilch’s contemporaries that he was the best of all. As it happens, it is possible to get a glimpse of what might have made Pilch so good. But that is not the only way in which his legend continued. His reputation endured so that when W. G. Grace came along, Pilch was still for many the point of comparison. For some who remembered him, Pilch’s success must have been more meretricious simply because batting was more difficult back then. And so, more than 30 years after his death and over half a century since he last took to a cricket field, Pilch’s name became embroiled in a debate that has never been settled: was cricket a sport that continually improved, or one that was in a permanent state of decline? Were those who played in the past better than those seen in contemporary cricket? Or were the current players the best of all time?

“The Star of the North”: The Life and Death of Tom Hunt

A drawing by John Corbett Anderson of the United Eleven of All England in 1855; Thomas Hunt is standing on the far left, cradling his bat (Image: via Playing Pasts)

Although it might seem like a recent phenomenon that cricket has been played in more than one format, there was a precedent in the distant past. Once upon a time, many of the leading players took part in something called single-wicket, but — in another historical foreshadowing — some were considerably better at single-wicket than the eleven-a-side version. One of these was a man called Tom Hunt. Typically for the period, he was somewhat rootless: he was born in Chesterfield, played for unofficial Yorkshire and Lancashire teams and played regularly for the Manchester and Sheffield clubs. In another echo across the years, like many professional cricketers, he played for whichever team offered him the best terms. But it was at single-wicket that he excelled, and his reputation inspired legends and memories long after his death in an unfortunate accident at the end of a cricket match.

The two formats of nineteenth century cricket require a little explanation. As well as the traditional game, in which first-class cricket (although such a concept was some way from coming into existence) was becoming pre-eminent despite a dizzyingly muddled and disordered fixture list, there was a popular variant known as “single wicket”. The latter had its own set of rules, its own section in the Laws of Cricket, and its own stars. In the days before railway travel made it economically viable to transport teams of cricketers across the country, men became famous for their solo adventures, challenging all-comers to a game of single wicket. But single-wicket was different in several ways to the sport — then and now — as a team game. Despite the implication of “single” (which referred to how many sets of stumps were used, not how many players on each team), some of the games were two-against-two, three-against-three or more. The bowler only delivered to one end and the batter had to run two lengths of the pitch — touching the stumps at the other end — to complete one run; there could be no overthrows but the batter could not run again once the fielder had thrown the ball across the pitch. Strokes behind the wicket did not count, nor did catches in that area. In some games, fielders helped out but in others, the single cricketer competing had to do all his own fielding. Timings were generous given how tiring this could be: bowlers were allowed up to a minute to recover between deliveries. As with many forms of cricket in this period, betting was doubtless a strong driving force but the attraction of seeing leading players competing against each other was clear, particularly at a time when county cricket had barely got off the ground.

Some of the best players of the mid-nineteenth century were highly effective exponents of single-wicket: men such as Tom Marsden and Fuller Pilch were famous long after their playing days had ended, and both were good single-wicket players. Maybe the most famous (and anticipated) of all single-wicket games — one which has been written about several times — was played between Alfred Mynn and Nicholas Felix at Lord’s in 1846. These two men were among the best cricketers of their time, and the match was extraordinary. Mynn was a round-arm fast bowler and Felix was a lob bowler; both men could bat extremely well. Mynn had been undefeated in single-wicket games since beating James Dearman of Yorkshire in “home” and “away” games in 1838 and was therefore the “Champion of England” (in a rather informal sense). For this game, both competitors were allowed two fielders to support them.

Alfred Mynn (left) and Nicholas Felix illustrated before their first single-wicket game of 1846 (Image: via ESPNcricinfo)

Before a crowd of around 3,000, Felix batted first and was bowled without scoring from his sixteenth ball. Part of the problem was that, as a strong cutter, Felix was hampered by the rules which did not permit runs behind the wicket. Felix had hit eleven of the sixteen deliveries, but failed to score. In reply Mynn made five runs, hitting every one of Felix’s sixteen gentle lobs, before he was caught from a full-blooded hit back at the bowler. The latter therefore batted again and over the course of two hours faced an incredible 247 deliveries from Mynn, most delivered at pace on a notoriously uneven Lord’s pitch. This time, he hit 175 of them, many of these being beautiful cuts that thrilled the crowd but from which no runs were possible. In all he scored just three runs before he was bowled; even with the addition of a wide from Mynn, his total of four meant that he had lost by an innings and one run. In a 2016 article on single-wicket, Jon Hotten described this match as “the format’s final and defining contest” and “the last great game of single-wicket cricket in England”. But it was not quite the end; for example, Mynn and Felix had a re-match later in 1846 at the White Hart Ground in Bromley. Felix lost again, over the course of two days.

But if the Lord’s game was the high-point of the single-wicket game, less prestigious matches continued to flourish for many years. The Cricket History website includes a list of single-wicket matches; even though the list cannot be comprehensive, it is instructive. Over 1,200 games are listed which took place in the 1840s, but if the format lost prestige after that it is not reflected in the games recorded: there were close to 1,350 in the 1850s and around 1,500 in the 1860s before numbers fell away dramatically. There continued to be a market for single-wicket after the Mynn-Felix game, including between big names. Some of these became real marathons, tests of stamina as much as cricketing skill.

One particularly prolonged encounter came in 1849, when Tom Hunt and Robert Crispin Tinley faced each other in Burton-on-Trent over the course of three days in August and September. This contest was sufficiently attractive for Bell’s Life to cover it in depth. Both men were good batters and fast round-arm bowlers. The “home” player Cris Tinley was a promising 18-year-old professional from Burton. He went on to play for Nottinghamshire and, inevitably for good players in this period, for William Clarke’s All-England Eleven. He was associated with the latter for twenty years and also took part in the second tour of Australia by an English team, that of George Parr in 1863–64. In later years he ran a Burton inn and died at the age of 70 in 1900; Tinley’s Wisden obituary said that he “held a very high place among the cricketers of a past generation”. His opponent in 1849 was a far more established player; Bell’s Life noted that Hunt was ten years older, four inches taller and four stones heavier than Tinley. The author noted also that Hunt was extremely experienced at single wicket, and “has been invariable successful; for several years he has given a challenge to all England, and has in vain sought for a competitor to the championship.” In 1849, Hunt had listed a challenge in Bell’s Life to anyone who wanted to face him; his preference was for John Wisden but when the latter declined, Tinley took up the challenge, which offered a prize of £50 to the winner.

Cris Tinley photographed later in life (Image: Trent Bridge)

The young Tinley, playing his first single-wicket game, more than held his own. On the first day (31 August), Tinley won the toss and batted first but was dismissed from his first ball, attempting to hit a leg-side ball and skying it to Hunt. Nevertheless, Tinley impressed with his pace bowling; Hunt struggled to score at first and was hit several times. At one point he had to retire for repairs, and broke two bats, but gradually got on top. He batted for five hours, facing 418 deliveries and scoring 46 runs (with four wides in addition). Bell’s Life noted that he scored seven twos (the rest were ones) which suggests that there must have been some big hits as these would have been equivalent to a modern all-run four. The next day, Hunt in effect declared: he needed to be in Sheffield for an important match and needed to leave that evening; he therefore requested that Tinley should begin his innings. Hunt made a shaky start with the ball and Tinley scored eight runs in the first nine minutes before his opponent settled down. But even then, Hunt could not dismiss Tinley, who had scored 30 runs in 130 minutes when “dinner” was called; after the interval, Tinley had reached a total of fifty after another 80 minutes when, at 5pm, Hunt requested a postponement as he was exhausted and needed to leave for Sheffield. The day ended with Tinley undefeated after scoring 45 runs from 266 balls (plus four wides and a no-ball). His hits included a three (equivalent to an all-run six) and ten twos; the locals were impressed, particularly those who had backed him at very long odds, and he had done his reputation no harm.

The match resumed on 14 September — in the meantime Hunt had played in big games at Sheffield and Manchester — with the scores level. Tinley, continuing his second innings, scored another six runs in 90 minutes and 152 deliveries — and was gifted four wides. Hunt resorted to bowling lobs; these were not particularly good but made Tinley hesitant and eventually he gave a return catch. His total of 51 was scored from 431 deliveries; the extras left Hunt needing eleven runs to win. It took him just 29 minutes to score them, helped by six wides, from 48 deliveries. The drop in quality compared to the first two days disappointed spectators but Tinley had not disgraced himself and Hunt won without being dismissed in either innings, in the process extending his long unbeaten stretch. Unsurprisingly, the match accumulated legends in the retelling; as details became blurred in the memory, some said that the match had lasted “weeks” (technically this was true) and both men had scored hundreds before letting the other have a turn, and that neither man could dismiss the other for days.

As it happened, Hunt was a man about whom it might have been easy to build legends. Although never a famous figure nationally, he was renowned in the north of England and had an excellent career. His reputation was such that he was still being remembered as a formidable cricketer in the 1890s, fifty years after his unfortunate death. Even in 1907, Cricket remembered him as “one of the finest single-wicket players of his day”.

Thomas Hunt was born in Chesterfield on 2 September 1819, the son of Robert Hunt, a shoemaker, and Elizabeth Ralphs. Details on his early life are limited as his early years predate the legal requirement for births to be registered, and details of individuals were not recorded on the 1821 or 1831 census. In 1837, he married Jane Morley (a year younger than him and the daughter of a potter) at North Wingfield in Derbyshire, giving his occupation as a coachmaker. In 1840, their daughter Emily was born and the 1841 census records the family living in Mansfield; Hunt was once more listed as a coachmaker. However, Jane died in 1842, aged just 23.

It was during this turbulent period that Hunt emerged as a cricketer. From what can be pieced together, he made his name in single-wicket matches; it is not impossible to imagine that a scenario in which he answered a challenge in a newspaper as a way of making money. But however it happened, he very soon made an impression. In October 1843, Hunt played George Chatterton at Sheffield and scored 165; this seems to be the highest innings in that form of cricket. It was not his only remarkable performance. In November 1843, he defeated Sam Dakin by an innings and 40 runs. Two years later, in August 1845, he took on an eleven from Knaresborough single-handedly at Chesterfield and won. Bell’s Life listed the game in a review of the 1845 season as taking place on 14 August. Hunt scored 33 and bowled out Knaresborough for 16; in the second innings, he managed ten but his opponents could only score nine in reply, leaving Hunt the winner by eight runs. The Knaresborough eleven was entirely amateur and presumably not very good; Hunt also had “home” advantage and possibly — according to legend — one of the umpires was not entirely sober. Presumably Hunt also had fielders to assist him, otherwise it is hard to see how he could have defeated eleven men, no matter how poor they were.

These and other achievements in single wicket games earned Hunt the nickname “The Star of the North” and provided him with opportunities elsewhere. By the mid-1840s, he was playing as a professional for several clubs, most notably the Manchester Cricket Club, Sheffield Cricket Club, and the Wednesday Club of Sheffield (out of which cricket team grew Sheffield Wednesday Football Club). Through his connection with Sheffield, Hunt played several times for a team known as Yorkshire between 1845 and 1851 (not the official county team, which did not come into existence until 1863); he also played matches (which have been given retrospective first-class status) for Manchester and Sheffield, and for an unofficial Lancashire team in 1849 (both appearances coming against “Yorkshire”). In the early 1850s, Hunt was engaged as the professional and groundsman of Manchester Cricket Club; when a new ground was opened at Old Trafford in 1857, Hunt and his wife were given accommodation in the pavilion.

Despite his growing reputation as a cricketer, Hunt listed himself as a “coachman” on the 1851 census. By then, he lived in Sheffield with his new wife and family; he had married Elizabeth White, who was from Chesterfield, in Nottingham in 1848. They had several children: George Henry (born 1850) and Elizabeth (1851) were later followed by Ann (1855) and George Herbert (1857). However, at the time of the 1851 census, his daughter Emily, from his first marriage, was living with Hunt’s family back in the Chesterfield area.

During the 1850s, Hunt’s reputation reached its height. The best professional side in England was William Clarke’s All-England Eleven which travelled around the country playing local teams; only the growth of railways made it possible for such a team to exist and made it economical for whole teams (rather than individuals, as in the case of single-wicket games) to travel to matches any distance from home. Hunt had already played against Clarke’s eleven for Manchester and for Sheffield, bringing him to Clarke’s notice and in 1850 he joined the touring team. On some occasions, as was common practice, Hunt travelled with the eleven but was “loaned” to the opposition to give them a greater chance of success. He also appeared in several games which offered a clear sign that he was among the best cricketers in England: his first appearance at Lord’s was for the North against the MCC in 1847; in 1850, he played for the Players against the Gentlemen at Lord’s, for much of the nineteenth century unquestionably the most important fixture in England, during which the leading professionals faced the leading amateurs. He also played in another prestigious series of matches, representing the North against the South six times (three of which were at Lord’s). His greatest achievement in first-class cricket came in 1856, opening the batting for the North against the South, when he scored a century against leading bowlers — including John Wisden — at a time such achievements were rare. Bell’s Life described the innings of 102 as “surpassing for defence and style all that we ever saw.”

William Clarke’s All-England Eleven, pictured in 1847 before Hunt joined (Image: Wikipedia)

This was Hunt’s only score over fifty in matches today recognised as first-class, but his overall average of 15.11 in 39 matches was good for the period in which he played; it is worth comparing the career averages of leading contemporary players such as Fuller Pilch (18.61), Nicholas Felix (18.15) and Alfred Mynn (13.42). But as a cricketer, Hunt seems to have done a bit of everything; he could keep wicket (he had nine first-class stumpings) and his fast bowling was responsible for 67 first-class wickets. As a large, powerfully built man (he was 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed 12 stones), his reputation was for hitting, but Scores and Biographies called him a “fine, upright and scientific batsman”.

He was also involved in a dispute involving the leading professionals around this time. In 1852, a group of rebels who had become disgruntled with Clarke’s leadership of the All-England Eleven broke away to form the rival United All-England Eleven; Hunt was one of the original signatories to a letter which made public their unhappiness with Clarke. Mick Pope, in his Headingley Ghosts (2013), suggests that there was “no love lost between Hunt and Clarke, for whenever the opportunity arose Hunt thrashed Clarke’s lob bowling with great relish”. After Clarke died in 1856, an annual match between the All-England Eleven and the United All-England Eleven became one of the highlights of each season; Hunt played in the first two such fixtures, at Lord’s in 1857, under the captaincy of Wisden. One of his All-England opponents was Cris Tinley. In games such as these, when the team included the best cricketers in England, Hunt rarely, if ever, bowled but occasionally kept wicket. He performed this role in what became his final first-class game, for Manchester against Sussex at Eccles in September 1858.

By this time, Hunt was 39, having celebrated his birthday on the first day of that game, and, having gained weight, was perhaps past his best. He had played for the opposition in a couple of games for the All-England Eleven that season, perhaps indicating some kind of rapprochement after Clarke’s death. A week after he played against Sussex, Hunt appeared in a game in Rochdale, when an “All-England and United All-England Combined Eleven” played a local twenty-two (such games were usually against the odds to make for a better contest) at Merefield Cricket Ground. Alongside Hunt in the Rochdale team were H. H. Stephenson, John Jackson and Thomas Sherman, leading professionals whose role was to strengthen the opposition. For Hunt, it was quite a convenient outing as he lived nearby in Manchester.

The game was unremarkable; it was scheduled for three days, but the weather prevented much play on the first two. Hunt scored 0 and 9, and although Rochdale held their own, the home team collapsed before a crowd of around 5,000 when the weather relented on 11 September, the final day. Needing 80 to win in the fourth innings, they were 33 for thirteen (with eight wickets to fall) when time ran out and the game was drawn.

The location of Merefield Cricket Club was probably on the ground next to Castleton Hall on this 1851 Ordnance Survey Map (surveyed between 1844 and 1847). The railway line can be seen passing to the south-east of the ground. Unfortunately, there are no other maps from this period which might give more information; the next was created over forty years later when the ground was gone. (Image: National Library of Scotland, CC-BY-NC-SA licence)

At the end of the game, Hunt went to collect his fee of £20 but did not stay for the celebration being held at a nearby hotel as he wanted to get home to Manchester by the 7pm train. He had arranged to meet his wife at Manchester’s Victoria Station, as he had done after each the first two days’ play, from where they would take the omnibus to Old Trafford. There was a little-known shortcut from Merefield Cricket Club to Rochdale’s railway station, saving approximately two minutes, which involved going around the back of the pavilion and walking approximately 200 yards along the railway line. Hunt had apparently taken this route many times, including on the first two days of the match in question. After receiving his match fee, he left the ground via this route at around 6:40pm, according to one witness, “perfectly sober”. Accompanying him was a local man called John Wild, who had worked on the railway, but now assisted at Rochdale Cricket Club; Hunt had paid him to carry his bats to the train station. Wild went first along the train track, followed by Hunt around 100 yards behind. It was the practice of those working on the line to keep to the right so they would always see a train coming; perhaps because of his experience on the railway, this is what Wild did. Hunt, however, walked between the tracks.

Wild later told an inquest how a goods train (with around forty carriages) had come past; he had stepped aside to let it go. At the same moment, a passenger train was coming in the other direction travelling at ten or eleven miles per hour. The driver told the inquest that he had sighted Hunt from 100 yards, just after passing the cricket ground, having not seen him sooner owing to the goods train. He immediately shut off his engine and sounded his whistle. But Hunt, who had his back to the train, appeared not to hear it. The driver threw the engine into reverse but it was too late and the train struck Hunt, knocking him down and running over his legs. Both his legs were severed at the calf and the fingers of his left hand, which was on the rail, were crushed. The driver believed all six of his carriages passed over Hunt before the train stopped.

There were various explanations of why Hunt did not react to the train. Wild had previously given a slightly different version, as reported in the press but not repeated at the inquest, that Hunt had seemed “bewildered” by the approach of the train and had been unable to find a safe place to which he could escape, but the driver seems to have been clear (under oath) about what occurred. Another witness to the accident, also not called to the inquest, suggested that the other train had drowned out the sound of the approaching passenger train. The same witness also reported that an acquaintance of Hunt called James Clegg, who had been at the cricket match and had seen Hunt leave, was there; the witness said that Hunt did not initially realise the extent of his injuries and asked Clegg to help him to his feet. When he became aware of what had happened, the witness reported that Hunt said to Clegg: “Yes, I’m dying. I feel it. Lord forgive me. Lord forgive me.” Clegg was a witness at the inquest but did not repeat any of this, although he did state that he saw Hunt after the accident. There seems to have been some discussion at the inquest over whether Hunt was at least partially deaf, which his wife appears to have suggested after his death, but those who played alongside him dismissed such an idea, reporting that he had no problem hearing when a batter had edged a ball.

In the aftermath of the accident, passengers from the train immediately got out to help, and locals arrived on the scene. The time was around 6:50pm. Hunt was placed in a labourer’s truck and carried to the railway station, and when it was seen how serious his condition was, he was taken to a nearby hotel. Medical attention was given, but it was hopeless and Hunt died just after 9pm — five minutes before his wife arrived, having been urgently summoned from Manchester when it was realised that Hunt was dying. She had been warned on her arrival at Rochdale what had happened, but the attempts to prepare her for what she would see delayed her enough so that Hunt was dead before she reached the hotel. Most reports said that he was only conscious for a few minutes after the accident, apart from a few isolated moments. When news reached the celebrating cricketers at another hotel, they immediately ended their gathering and began a collection for Hunt’s widow and children.

An inquest was held on 15 September, four days after Hunt’s death. The coroner made clear that no-one, particularly the train driver, was responsible and the 16-man jury returned a verdict of accidental death. There was some argument about how much the train company could have done to prevent such incidents, and the discussion became quite heated at some points. A representative of the railway company emphasised that any such travel along the tracks was unauthorised; he insisted that his company bore no liability for what happened. The manager of the railway station conceded that he had allowed some people to travel along the line to the cricket ground, but Hunt was doing so without permission; the company representative seemed less than impressed by the discovery that anyone at all had been allowed to do so and the manager had clearly exceeded his authority. A recommendation from the coroner, endorsed by the jury, was that the railway company should prohibit anyone walking on the track. The representative of the company gave a donation there and then to the growing fund for Hunt’s family and planned to ask the directors, on behalf of Rochdale Cricket Club, to open a subscription. The company also waived a fee for transporting Hunt’s body back to Manchester. By the time of his burial later that day, the fund had raised over £70.

Hunt’s death was widely reported in newspapers, and the inquest was covered across the country, including in the Morning Chronicle in London. The fullest account of the death and inquest was printed in the Rochdale Observer; the details from the witness who claimed to have heard Hunt’s last words were printed in the Liverpool Mail. A later claim by R. S. Holmes in his History of Yorkshire County Cricket Club 1833–1903 (1904) that Hunt had been drunk was entirely without substance. A subscription was also opened for Hunt in Sheffield.

To compound the misery of Hunt’s wife Elizabeth, she was around four months pregnant with their fifth child, Henrietta (who was born in March 1859), at the time of his death. By the time of the 1861 census, she and four of the children (there is no further trace of George Henry; he was either dead or the family had subtracted eight years from his age and changed his second name to Herbert) were living in Hulme, Manchester. She listed herself as a “fundholder”, perhaps still living off the collections made for her late husband. The 1871 census lists Elizabeth (with the occupation of “housekeeper”) and the same four children still living in Hulme, but with an additional child, Bertha, born in 1865. Bertha died in late 1871, but the others were still at the same address in 1881. Mrs Hunt, and her daughters Elizabeth and Anne, still lived in Hulme in 1891, albeit at a different address, but she is listed as “living on her own means”; the three women, joined by George Herbert, are still there in 1901. By 1911, they had moved to Stretford and the 60-year-old Elizabeth was working as a shopkeeper, assisted by her sister Annie. Elizabeth Hunt née White died in June 1912, never having remarried. Only Emily (who was 17 when her father died) and Henrietta seem to have married and had children.

The Merefield Cricket Ground no longer exists; it was sold for redevelopment in 1867. The bowling club which succeeded to the land is still there; known today as the Castleton Bowling Club, it is surrounded by houses and remains close to the railway line and station where Tom Hunt was killed over 160 years ago.