Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

match) for the Players. (Charles Palmer scored two, in different matches, for the Gentlemen). He is the oldest player to play regularly (at 54); the oldest to score 1,000 runs in a season (at 52); the oldest to score a century (at 54); the oldest to score a double century (at 52); the oldest to take 100 wickets in a season (at 49); the oldest to take five wickets in an innings (at 52); the oldest to take ten wickets in a match (at 49); and the oldest to perform the hat-trick (at 49). Moreover no Leicestershire bowler has ever taken seven wickets in fewer than his 20 balls against Yorkshire. On a less happy note he is also the only batsman for the county ever to have been dismissed ‘hitting the ball twice’. In all the 26 years in which King played for Leicestershire (in odd matches only in 1895, 1897 and 1898 and then regularly from 1899 to 1925 with the exception of 1910, when through injury he played in only two Championship matches, and the four years of war), his county finished in the top half of the competition only twice (seventh in 1904 and fifth in 1905) and in the bottom four no fewer than 17 times, of which it was equal last three times and last-but-one on a further four occasions. The strict rules of qualification and the very limited financial resources of a small and not particularly rich county had the inescapable consequence of a generally weak team. The chances of victory against one of the ‘Big Six’ counties were always slim. Indeed in the 51 matches against Yorkshire during these years Leicestershire won only two, of the 48 against Surrey again only two, and of the 52 against Lancashire but four, while against Kent there was not even the consolation of a handful of drawn games for out of 30 55 as many as 26 were lost with only two won. In such circumstances the Leicestershire players (and the same is, of course, true for all the weaker counties) knew that success in the Championship was a mirage at best. It is clear from newspaper reports that paid players often took the field with a defeatist attitude, bowling in dispirited manner against the likes of Hobbs on a ‘shirt-front’ at the Oval or Fry and ‘Ranji’ on a sun-baked pitch at Hove, and batting nervously, ever anxious to return to the pavilion unharmed, against the likes of Kortright on a bumpy pitch His Place in Leicestershire’s Annals 125 55 Leicestershire did not play Kent until 1906.