Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

top-scored against the always formidable Yorkshiremen with an innings of 37 out of 112 at Bramall Lane; made 65 out of a fifth-wicket partnership of 134 with C.J.B.Wood against the ‘Peakites’ at Chesterfield, coming in when ‘the wicket was beginning to cut up’ and batting ‘without blemish’ despite deteriorating light; improved his best bowling analysis to four for 12 at The Oval, including bowling his future colleague, the Leicester-born V.F.S. (‘Very Fast Scoring’) Crawford; bowled unchanged through an innings for the first time when MCC was dismissed for 57 at Lord’s (although he took only one for 27 in 21 overs while Arthur Woodcock took nine for 28); was entrusted with opening the bowling, albeit unsuccessfully, against the Australians; and made his début for MCC in first-class matches. For the first time also he had the pleasure of his brother James’ company in the team against Middlesex at Lord’s, although this fraternal pleasure generated no great success since between them they made but 26 runs in four innings, took a single lower-order wicket while conceding 54 runs and held no catch. Fred Root considered King, together with others such as Rhodes, Hirst and Astill, as classic examples of players ‘who have to rely almost entirely upon their bowling ability during the earlier stages of their career, later developing into recognized batsmen’. But he was surely wrong in King’s case, for 1900 saw his break-through in both areas (Root was hardly right even if he was thinking solely of his sojourn at Birkenhead). After a total in his first four years of 965 runs at just over 16 an innings and 34 wickets at just over 45 each, he now, despite ‘spectacles’ and no wickets in the opening match against MCC, was only nine runs short of 1,000 runs for the season and his 81 wickets cost only 22.13 each, an average lower, by over 3 runs, than that for his batting, which is always the mark of a really valuable all-rounder. Wisden comments that he ‘came out in surprising form, his advance upon anything he had previously done being most marked. . . . King was always attractive to the on-looker . . . took more wickets than anyone else, and could certainly claim to be the best all-round man on the side.’ Having never previously taken five wickets in an innings he now, on each occasion opening the bowling, performed the feat seven times, including three in consecutive innings in two matches against Worcestershire. In the first of these games he took ten wickets in a match for the first time (11 for 69), while in the two games against these opponents he had the remarkable combined 46 From Journeyman to Master