Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

ABOUT THE AUTHOR As a small urchin A.R.Littlewood , whose paternal grandmother (née Hirst) used to insist she was related in some complicated way to the Yorkshire and England all-rounder George Hirst, was coached in the old winter-school shed at the Aylestone Road ground, where King had played most of his home matches. He did not see his first county match until 1950, when he marvelled at a catch made by Paddy Corrall standing up to a full-blooded hit from a Northamptonshire batsman that he thought would go through the wicket-keeper. (Shortly before he died Paddy told him, ‘You can’t do anything else but catch those’. ) As a young grammar school boy he used to perch on top of the ground scoreboard at Grace Road with a friend (whose mother once heard John Arlott mention the pair in a wireless commentary), operating the board for the county’s Second Eleven players, and actually being paid for the privilege when the Seconds had a match of their own. At the age of 13, he joined Clarendon Park Cricket Club (for which Darren Maddy of Leicestershire and England played much later) as wicket-keeper batsman, but soon became an off-break bowler and extraordinarily stodgy opening bat. Once he had the thrill of playing on the Aylestone Road ground against whose home team of Leicester Electricity he recorded his best figures of seven for 20. Eventually deciding to take academic matters more seriously, he played little cricket at Leeds and Oxford, but while the club was in existence played for a few years in Canada for the University of Western Ontario. For many years he watched Leicestershire whenever he could while on research trips to England and kept up his completely idiosyncratic county records. Now retired as professor from the Department of Classics, he has a little more time to devote to cricket when the peremptory demands of Byzantine manuscripts permit.