Somerset Cricket Club – Players Gallery. The Palairet Brothers


Photos from SCCC Players, Photographs and Statistics – available in the Museum and Library.

Museum Memorabilia here

Richard Cameron North Palairet (25 June 1871 – 11 February 1955) was an English cricketer who played first-class cricket for Oxford University and Somerset. After his playing days, he became a prominent cricket administrator, acting as secretary at Surrey County Cricket Club and being joint manager, with Pelham Warner, of the English cricket team in Australia in 1932-33.

As a cricket player, Palairet was overshadowed by his brother, Lionel, who played for the same two first-class sides and was regarded as one of the stylish batsmen of the 1890s and the early 1900s. 

In 112 first-class matches, he made exactly 4,000 runs at an average of 21 runs per innings; he scored only two centuries in a career that lasted 12 years. His highest was 156 against Sussex at the County Ground, Taunton in 1896 when he put on 249 for the second wicket with his brother, who made 154. 

Palairet played his last first-class match in 1902, but came back into the game as secretary of Surrey from 1920 to 1932 and was president of Somerset County Cricket Club from 1937 to 1946.

Lionel Charles Hamilton Palairet (27 May 1870 – 27 March 1933) played for Somerset and Oxford University and 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.

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.

Over the following decade, he was one of the leading amateur batsmen in England. He passed 1,000 first-class runs in a season on seven occasions, and struck two double centuries. His highest score, 292 runs against Hampshire in 1895, remained a record for a Somerset batsman until 1948. His only Test matches were the fourth and fifth Tests against Australia in 1902: Australia won the fourth Test by three runs, and England won the fifth Test by one wicket. After 1904, he appeared infrequently for Somerset, though he played a full season in 1907 when he was chosen to captain the county. He retired from first-class cricket in 1909, having scored over 15,000 runs.