#canterbury week

3 incidents tagged

Kent's 1860s Decline — From Champion County to Sixteen-A-Side, 1860-1869

Kent vs other counties

1865-09-01

Kent, the most successful county of the 1830s and 1840s under Fuller Pilch's batting, fell into financial and competitive decline through the 1860s. With Pilch retired, Kent was sometimes forced to field elevens of up to sixteen by combining with local club cricketers from Whitstable, Faversham and Ashford. The 1862 Willsher walk-off was Kent's most consequential moment of the decade — but its leading bowler's career and the club's increasing reliance on him underline how thin the county's resources had become.

#kent#1860s#decline

⭐Mild

E.M. Grace's MCC v Kent Match — 192 Not Out and 10 Wickets, 1862

MCC vs Kent

1862-08-15

Three years before his younger brother W.G. made his first-class debut, E.M. Grace produced one of the most extraordinary all-round performances in cricket history. Playing for the MCC at Canterbury Week against Kent on 14-15 August 1862, the 20-year-old from Downend carried his bat for 192 not out of an MCC total of 344, then took all ten Kent wickets in the first innings for 69 runs. The match, played 12-a-side, would not enter the official records — but the news of it travelled around the cricket world and made E.M. Grace a household name overnight.

#em-grace#the-coroner#1862

⭐Mild

Fuller Pilch's Kent Engagement and the Move to Canterbury — 1842 onward

Kent

1842-04-01

Fuller Pilch's £100-a-year retainer with Kent, agreed with the proprietor Thomas Selby in the late 1830s, was the largest professional cricket contract of its day. By 1842 Pilch was the central figure in the Kent eleven; the move from Town Malling to Canterbury as the county's principal venue, completed by 1847, was built around his presence.

#fuller-pilch#kent#canterbury