Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

regular players), again the highest score, again one five-wicket analysis, and but a single wicket more at a similar average, and again Leicestershire finished fourteenth. Despite his age, and occasional neuralgia, he was included in the touring party for Leicestershire’s tour of the far north of Scotland when the Agricultural Society held its show on the Aylestone Road ground in July. For the last time in his career his bowling played an important rôle in a match: on 17 August his five wickets for 31 runs in 52 balls hustled Glamorgan to a defeat at Leicester made possible, with major contributions from Taylor and Astill, by his own 59 after the county had suffered a deficit in the first innings. One wicket, however, he probably subsequently regretted, even though it was that of a man destined to make a great name for himself, the redoubtable R.E.S.Wyatt, for it was this that against Warwickshire at Edgbaston deprived Ewart Astill of a full set of ten, a feat that had never been accomplished for the county up to that time and only once, by George Geary in 1929, since. He took a long time to get going in batting, his average, finally 32.17 in the Championship, standing at 7.70 after his first ten innings during which he suffered a badly cut finger against Surrey; but his 60 against Sussex in early June was ‘evidence that his bat is still a power in the land’. Against Gloucestershire at Leicester he was top scorer in both innings with 68 and 48, as at Maidstone with 40 and an unbeaten 71; and again at Leicester he showed that his skill could yet triumph over failing reactions when he with 36 and Astill with 27 alone withstood the fearsome combination of Robinson, Macaulay, Roy Kilner and Rhodes in a first-innings total of 129 boosted by extras. It was for another match, however, that his fame was bruited far and wide. Hampshire had scored 252 on the Saturday at Aylestone Road, and Leicestershire had lost two cheap wickets when King joined Astill on Monday, 2 July. Both scored centuries, the latter departing for 106 after they had added 215; but King continued against bowlers no less than Kennedy and Newman who were to take 295 Championship wickets between them that summer. He batted throughout the day, bar a brief delay for bad light and rain. Next morning he still had the energy to be stumped; but by that time he had mulcted Hampshire to the amount of 205 runs, an innings containing 28 fours and but a single observable error. There were Nestor 105