All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

89 Bart King it was the country’s standard cricket history. In 1879 his wicketkeeping uncle Leland had become the first man to represent England in Tests who had never played for a first-class county. King’s final victim, Joseph Lynch, was playing his only first-class match. He was killed in France in 1915 aged 35. It has to be recognised that the Irish team wasn’t very strong. Five were making their first-class debut, some top players were unavailable, and it has been suggested that its selection was biased towards the south. In their careers the whole team played only 65 first-class matches between them, scoring 1,273 runs at an average of 11.68 with just four fifties but no centuries. Philadelphia in turn also struggled for a while. Opener C.Christopher ‘Christy’ Morris went first. To honour his lifelong devotion to the game the famous Cricket Library and Collection housed in the Haverford College Library would later be named after him. However with opener Francis White batting three hours for 118 and the tail wagging vigorously, the home side eventually achieved a healthy lead (Morrow coming on late taking four for 42). The Irish did even worse second time around, King (four for 38) and Hordern (five for 30) sharing the wickets, with King this time legitimately dismissing Morrow, and then Browning and Aston, in an all-bowled hat-trick. The dinner dance laid on in the evening in the club house may have been some consolation. Ireland did no better in the return match at Manheim, though Morrow shone again, top scoring in each innings with 35 out of 78 and 22 out of 68. Sadly he did not live to an old age, dying in a Dublin nursing home in 1914 aged 37. How good was King? C.B. Fry thought him ‘the best swerver I ever saw’, Hordern said that he would be his first choice in a World XI, and Yorkshire’s Rockley Wilson thought that around 1903 he was probably the best fast bowler in the world. King had a very good record on tour. The counties didn’t usually field their strongest teams but on the other hand, playing for a relatively weak team, King often lacked consistent support at the other end. Some evidence is provided by King’s record against a selection of the top batsmen of the period. For example, he bowled in 59 innings against one or other of Warner, Jessop, Hayward, Ranji, S.E.Gregory, G.Giffen, Darling and Hill, dismissing them 19 times (ie about 1 in 3 innings). Hugh Trumble, one of Australia’s greatest bowlers, dismissed the same batsmen 49 times in 141 innings (again about 1 in 3). This comparison has many limitations, but does suggest that King’s record against the best was good, lending weight to the high regard in which he was held. Finishing with 415 wickets at 15.65 each, King’s career ended in 1912 as it had begun, with two matches against Australian tourists. He continued to play club cricket, but Philadelphian cricket went into decline after the War due to the counter-attraction of other leisure opportunities. King’s later career was in insurance. Elected an honorary life member of MCC in 1962, he died three years later in a Philadelphia nursing home two days short of his 92nd birthday.