[2] As a cricketer, he was often a lower-order batsman and usually a bowler, though he later batted as an opener and it is not always clear, from incomplete records, that he bowled in every game.
Equally, it is not known if he batted right- or left-handed, and nor is his bowling style definitively recorded, though his obituary in The Times states that he bowled left-handed,[3] while the Scores and Annals of the West Kent Cricket Club states that he was "a crafty left - hand bowler (slow medium)".
[2] He played in some amateur cricket games after Cambridge, but only three of them, in successive seasons from 1858 and all for the Gentlemen of Kent side, were rated as first-class.
[1] In 1872, he was appointed as a puisne judge on the High Court of Bengal in India "with every prospect of becoming Chief Justice", according to his Times obituary; in the event, a change of government in the UK appointed Richard Garth, also a first-class cricketer, and Pontifex remained on the judges' bench for 10 years.
[3] In 1882, he was recalled to London to become a special legal adviser to the Marquess of Hartington, Secretary of State for India and he remained in this post until he retired in 1892, at which point he was knighted.