Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

year of publication of that book, before being combined in a single volume with commentary by none other than Beldam. A fifth photograph of King at Birkenhead shows his stance. Other photographs of him as a bowler are all posed and of no additional help. With such paucity of visual evidence we are forced to rely largely on written evidence. King was well built, nearly six feet in height and with a long reach. He was, moreover, at least in his prime, lean rather than thin, extremely athletic, lissom, swift of foot and of quick reaction. His courage, even in old age, was not to be doubted, however much he was on occasion bruised. As a batsman he was correct and orthodox with a good defence and aggressive scoring strokes – Wisden of 1901 claims that he was ‘of the hard-hitting school’ – and most effective in both modes against fast bowling. In his stance his left foot was behind and parallel with the crease, right heel partly behind the crease with toes pointing diagonally in front, bat sloping into the body in contradistinction with the more old-fashioned straight bat favoured by his colleague Knight. His whole stance gives an impression of watchfulness and readiness to move into any position for defence or attack. In his formative years, with the general improvement of wickets after the middle of the century, forward play was the norm. Indeed, as late as March 1924, The Cricketer published a poem by Edward G.Evans, prefaced by a perverse adaptation of lines in Horace’s sixth Roman ode 11 worthy of Pycroft or Felix, on the sad fate of an imaginary prep-school lad named Peter Barlow Jones 30 Technique and Style Chevallier Taylor’s chalk drawing probably derives from photographs taken by G.W.Beldam. 11 Odes 3.6.37-41