Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

to the south, although increasingly ‘showers of smuts, black, sticky, and vile-tasting’, in Root’s words, which fell ‘at almost regular intervals’ were irksome to players. 24 The pitch was in the first few years very lively until by generous applications of Nottingham marl it was brought up to a higher standard. One innovation was that amateurs and professionals now entered the field through the same gate, though still from segregated dressing-rooms. The ground was opened by the Marquis of Granby, on behalf of the Club, and the Mayor of Leicester, on behalf of the town, on 13 May, the first day of the inaugural match, against Surrey. Although Leicestershire lost, King revelled in the new surroundings to make a capital 65 in the large first innings and dominate the second with a chanceless 91 out of only 172 in 155 minutes. This performance earned him ‘talent money’, and ‘never was it more thoroughly deserved and honestly earned than in this instance, for he faced the superb bowling of the Surrey attackers with infinite credit to himself, and at a time, too, when the majority of his colleagues seemed almost helpless against it’. He was clearly the most important man in the team this season with a batting average in Championship matches over 13 runs higher than his bowling average. Finishing second to Wood in the former and, among the regular bowlers, top in the latter discipline, he played a large rôle in Leicestershire having for the first time as many as three 48 From Journeyman to Master When first used as Leicestershire’s main ground, in 1901, Aylestone Road still had a rural aspect. King played 208 first-class matches here. 24 George Headley is famously reputed to have tasted the smuts in the speedily-to-be-corrected belief (or did he only mischievously pretend to such a belief?) that they were black snow.