Page:Seventy One Not Out.pdf/22

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CRICKET AT REIGATE
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man and noted as a great thrower. Lanaway was another of our crack players, and old Tom Kent, an under-hand bowler, whom Fuller Pilch in his great innings played at Reigate for Town Mailing, hit over a high tree, about which poor Tom was chaffed till his dying day. Pilch made 160 in the match. In his innings he hit one 6 (over the tree) and made also the following: 9 4's=36, 12 3's=36, and 18 2's=36—rather a curious concidence. Lambert, the famous old-time Surrey player, played with Reigate before my day, but I remember his son playing with us. I knew the famous old cricketer, however. He used to work at the fuller's earth pits at Nutfield, and often came to my father's shop to be shaved. He used to tell me how, when a young man, he was wont to walk from Red Hill to London to play on Kennington Common. Alfred Mynn came to Reigate when I was a little boy to play for the Camberwell Clarence Club. I was taken to see the match, but can recollect little about it.

I was educated at the Reigate Grammar-School, and when about twelve years of age became passionately fond of cricket. We boys used at that time to chalk out three stumps on the trunk of a tree on the Castle Field cricket-ground and use that for a wicket. The tree is still standing at the present day. When I became a few years older, I played with the Reigate Club; and later still,