page_title: Lionel Palairet
section_title: Leading amateur batsman
hierarchical_section_title: Lionel Palairet / Cricket career / Leading amateur batsman
caption_attribution_description: English: Lionel Palairet, Somerset amateur cricket, from Cricket of Today and Yesterday (1902)
context_page_description: Lionel Charles Hamilton Palairet was an English amateur cricketer who played for Somerset and Oxford University. A graceful right-handed batsman, he was selected to play Test cricket for England twice in 1902. Contemporaries judged Palairet to have one of the most attractive batting styles of the period. His obituary in The Times described him as "the most beautiful batsman of all time". An unwillingness to tour during the English winter limited Palairet's Test appearances; contemporaries believed he deserved more Test caps.
  Palairet was educated at Repton School. He played in the school cricket team for four years, as captain in the latter two, before going to Oriel College, Oxford. He achieved his cricketing Blue in each of his four years at Oxford, and captained the side in 1892 and 1893. For Somerset, he frequently opened the batting with Herbie Hewett. In 1892, they shared a partnership of 346 for the first wicket, an opening stand that set a record for the County Championship and remains Somerset's highest first-wicket partnership. In that season, Palairet was named as one of the "Five Batsmen of the Year" by Wisden.
context_section_description: Over the following seasons, Palairet moved to "the front rank of amateur batsmen," according to W. G. Grace. He played for Arthur Shrewsbury's England XI against Australia in 1893, and scored 71 runs as the English side won by an innings and 153 runs. He scored five half-centuries for Somerset that summer, and his batting average of 28.94 in the County Championship was bettered only by Hewett among his teammates. The next year, Palairet made a big score against his former university. Facing a team that included his brother, Richard Palairet, and was captained by Fry, he made 181 runs in Somerset's second innings, the highest first-class score of his career to that point. He also scored a century against Nottinghamshire, making 119 runs before being out leg before wicket to his old trainer Attewell. He fell just short of 1,000 first-class runs in 1894; though two half-centuries scored against the touring South Africans in matches not considered first-class would have taken him over the milestone.
  In 1895, Palairet was fourth in the national batting averages, having scored 1,313 runs at 46.89. The three batsmen above him, Archie MacLaren, Grace and Ranjitsinhji all appeared for England that year. Palairet scored three centuries during the season; two against Middlesex, on the latter occasion batting undefeated through the whole Somerset innings, and one against Yorkshire, when he struck 165. He passed a thousand runs again the following year, maintaining a batting average in excess of 40. A fourth-innings score of 83 not out that season drew praise from Ranjitsinhji; on a difficult pitch, Palairet farmed the strike and rescued a draw for his side. Just over a month later, he reached his highest total in first-class cricket, scoring 292 runs against Hampshire. It was his first double century, and the highest score by any Somerset batsman in first-class cricket at that time. One newspaper in Australia, reporting on his innings, declared that; "should he retain his form he will certainly be worthy of a place ... in the final Test match at the Oval." Either side of that match against Hampshire, he appeared for the Gentlemen against the Players at The Oval and Lord's, but made little impact on either game. He returned to form against Sussex on their visit to Taunton, sharing a 249-run partnership with his brother, and scoring 154 runs himself. The match was played shortly before the final Test match against Australia, but despite the comments in the Australian press, Palairet was not selected for the match. He did appear twice against the tourists that summer, for Somerset he scored six across two innings, and chosen to play for Charles Thornton's XI during the Scarborough Festival, he scored 71 runs in an innings victory.
  In 1897 Palairet made fewer first-class appearances, playing in only 12 matches. He scored 593 runs at an average just below 30, the only time between 1895 and 1906 that his average was below that value. Despite this relatively quiet season, Somerset still relied heavily on him; he led the county batting averages in the 1897 County Championship. In 1898, Palairet topped 1,000 first-class runs for the third season out of four. He struck 179 not out against Gloucestershire in Bristol, and late in the season, also against Gloucestershire, he captained Somerset for the first time, leading them to victory by an innings and 169 runs. He played in two matches during the Scarborough Festival, in which he scored 54, his highest innings for the Gentlemen against the Players, and also appeared for Thornton's "England XI" against that season's county champions, Yorkshire.
  Palairet missed all of the 1899 season through appendicitis; Baily's Magazine of Sports & Pastimes suggested that but for this he might have appeared for England against Australia that summer. He returned in 1900, scoring 947 runs at an average of 35.07. His only century came against Hampshire, when he scored 161 runs, and shared a partnership of 262 with Charles Bernard.
  The subsequent 1901 season was, statistically, his best. He trailed only Fry and R
caption: Palairet, pictured in Cricket of Today and Yesterday in 1902
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