Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

Street by his mother returning from chapel, the chilled and bedraggled miscreant urchin was hurried home and nursed for several weeks before fully recovering. In more organized sports he was to excel at boxing, fencing and especially as a three-quarter at rugby football. According to his daughter he was first encouraged to concentrate on cricket by his headmaster, the Rev Robert Seddon, who used to place on each of his stumps a sixpenny piece (a princely sum at the time) to incite the bowling aspirations of his pupil, although at that time young Jack ‘had some aptitude’ also ‘for keeping wicket’. 3 He clearly showed great promise early on, for when still a junior boy at the school he was given permission on one occasion at least to skip lessons in favour of playing for the town club. When King attended Lutterworth Grammar School it had few pupils. Though built in 1880 to accommodate 80, it had only 40 boys attending by 1885 and a mere 24 by 1889. It was closed between 1895 and 1898 – hence probably the lack of records before then. The school history by a former headmaster, George Irving, states that sporting activities of the early years are very difficult to trace as no magazines exist from before 1916. If there were any school matches in King’s times, their flavour may perhaps be caught in the reminiscences in the Lutterworthian of 1953 by an old boy, J.H.Hubbard, who was at the school from 1898 to 1902, and wrote that ‘Our greatest thrill at school was of course to get into the school cricket and football teams. Very many happy times we had, especially when we played away games against Hinckley GS, Loughborough GS and several schools in Leicester, especially the old Wyggeston boys, but we only played the second XI of the latter school. Each journey meant a four horse wagonette ride and a cheery sing song on the way home whether we won or lost.’ After his school-days had ended, King briefly entered the printing trade with a Mr F.W.Bottrill. He continued to play rugger and also boxed and fenced with Messrs W.G.Rose and J. and T.S.Smart, all fellow-members of the local rugby and cricket clubs. Notwithstanding his skill in these other sports, however, his greatest successes and enthusiasm indubitably involved cricket. Early Days 15 3 All quotations, unless otherwise attributed, are from the Leicester Daily Mercury (later simply Leicester Mercury ).