Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

at Leyton or Hirst on a sticky wicket at Bramall Lane. 56 Nowhere, however, to my knowledge is there the slightest suggestion that King did not strive with nerve and sinew to do his utmost however unpromising (and so often it was far more than this) was the situation for his side. Throughout his career there are only four instances of him being recorded as ‘retired hurt’ on the scorecard, and rarely did an injury keep him out of the game for long. Mention is common of the fact that he was likely to have won more representative honours if he had played for a county that commanded greater space in the national and metropolitan press, and we may add that his figures would have been more impressive, and consequently his claims more compelling, had he played for a stronger county. Yet again there seems to be no evidence that he expressed or felt any regret that he was tied to a weak county. Early in his career when he was at Birkenhead he was urged to stay in Lancashire, where, it was pointed out, he would have had the chance to qualify for the county team by residence, but he returned to Leicester for, as his daughter said, ‘Father wanted to come home’. 57 The Leicester Daily Mercury gives the best, but not the only, evidence of how he was regarded by his county’s supporters. Although he was county-born and county-bred, King was a hardly a local ‘lad’ when he first started to play for Leicestershire. He made his début in four matches at the age of 24 and when he appeared next (and then only fleetingly) two years later he was already in his second year as a professional with Birkenhead Park. He played with no regularity for his county until he was 28 and had little success before he was 29. The crowds could not, then, take him to heart in a kind of proprietorial and fatherly manner as they could a teenager whom they had followed from his first steps in the Championship (and perhaps even earlier in Club and Ground games). He was no Ewart Astill who was known to keen followers of cricket in Leicester before he first played for the county in a single match at the tender age of 18 and then delighted them with 126 His Place in Leicestershire’s Annals 56 Genuine amateurs (unlike those who could play as amateurs only because their counties gave them non-playing paid employment) were more inclined to play for their personal delight in pitting their courage, wits and technique against the game’s most skilled practitioners and gaining glory for combat with a Hobbs or Rhodes. 57 They must have talked about this, for it happened many years before Margaret was born. It must be admitted, however, that King surely realized that his chances were vastly greater of gaining a regular place in the Leicestershire than in the Lancashire team.