Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

the 205 runs scored while he was at the wicket, it fails to mention that his score was more than the combined 110 of all his ten colleagues (and only 12 fewer than the 11 men of Sussex achieved), a really remarkable feat for a 54-year-old. 43 He certainly began the season in marvellous form, for in the very next match, ‘looking all over the best bat’, he made 70 against Glamorgan at Leicester. The next highest score in the match was Geary’s 39 and nobody else reached 20. Opposed to his 70 were 195 from 32 other innings (an average of 6.09: there were also 15 extras). King, on his own, beat each of his opponents’ puny efforts of 60 and 36, as Astill and Geary bowled unchanged to bring about an easy victory in only six and a half hours of play. But only once more, with 91 on a fast wicket at Blackheath, when the next highest Nestor 109 Going in at 4 for two, King scored his last first-class century, at Hove in May 1925, facing Maurice Tate at the peak of his powers. 43 His age was 54 years and 16 days, the highest at the time for a centurion in the Championship. Three years later Willie Quaife scored 115 against Derbyshire on 4 August in his last match for Warwickshire (and only one of the season) at the age of 56 years and 140 days. Since Quaife and W.G.Grace, with three each, are the only players to have scored first-class centuries at a more advanced age, King remains the most elderly left-handed centurion.