Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

again from 1903, ‘King foolishly ran himself out in attempting the impossible’, are rare. In all he was run out 23 times, that is on average only once a season, a very low figure accounting for 2.5% of his dismissals. 15 There were occasions, when runs were unimportant but staying in was essential to stave off defeat, that he turned down easy runs to the frustration of his partners, not to mention the spectators. Needless to say, when he was in his fifties his running had appreciably slowed, and in his monumental 205 against Hampshire at the age of 52 there was not a single three. Since nobody alive to-day saw King bat in his prime and there survives no detailed analysis of his batting and but four photographs, it is somewhat hazardous to assess him stylistically. In the feature on our cricketer which graced the front page of an edition of The Cricketer in 1921, it is averred that he ‘is one of those left-handed batsmen who may be described as “busy”’, but by that time he was already fifty years old (the writer makes an error of over two years in his date of birth). As has already been noted, he developed slowly and it was only when he was already in his thirtieth year that the local newspaper saw fit to announce that ‘he seems to have lost the cramped and one-stroke style which previously characterised his play, and to have developed a much freer game’. Of him in his prime, the terms we read most often for his batting are ‘free-swinging’, ‘free-flowing’, ‘powerful’, ‘correct’, ‘clean’, ‘crisp’, ‘flashing’, ‘graceful’ and the less specific ‘attractive’. These apply especially to his driving, notably into the covers, and cutting; but at times, with strokes to leg, the epithet is ‘pretty’. Perhaps we can say, in architectural terms, that he was somewhat roughly sculpted Ionic, as opposed, amongst his colleagues, to the Doric C.J.B.Wood and the Corinthian C.E.de Trafford. 16 Could we perhaps describe the batsman King at his best as a sort of minor and somewhat less graceful because more pugnacious but still very attractive Graeme Pollock? Nevertheless, on occasion and to some eyes, his batting was too robust to be described as Ionic, ‘J.C.’ of the Sporting Chronicle giving him at Lord’s in 1909 a quarterstaff in contrast with Hobbs’ rapier. Of King as a bowler we again have four action photographs from 38 Technique and Style 15 Gunn’s too was low at 2.7%. 16 Since my early years I have visualized an analogy between the Greek orders and batsmen’s styles: perhaps I can make this analogy clearer with more recent examples – Cowdrey was Doric in excelsis , Dexter Corinthian, May Ionic, or, to give Leicestershire parallels for the Ionic, Hallam and Gower.