Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

team-man was that at Leicester he was not out with 24 at the finish to help his county to victory. Nevertheless of possibly even greater merit was his analysis of five for 112 in 45 overs at Scarborough when Yorkshire ran up a mammoth 562 at 3.32 runs an over. In the notoriously wet season of 1902 Leicestershire managed to finish above four counties, including Middlesex, thanks in considerable part to King, the mainstay of the batting with Wood and Knight and of the bowling with Billy Odell. At the end of the season the local newspaper judged that he had ‘worn the “running fox” with credit’. His most memorable performance came outside the Championship when he and Woodcock bowled unchanged to dismiss the Australians for 126. King himself took five for 76: besides having the captain Joe Darling and Warwick Armstrong caught, he bowled the redoubtable Victor Trumper, then in the midst of a superlative season, for 20 ‘with a ball that broke from the off, the batsman being too late for it’. Five weeks later, for an England XI against the same opponents, he ‘batted freely’ to become the second-highest scorer in the first innings before he was run out for 47, and he also had the satisfaction of bowling Monty Noble for a single in his two for 20. Although this latter match did not denote any great advance in his extra-county recognition, for the England XI was a ‘moderate side’ in a hastily arranged fixture and included three other Leicestershire players, his selection at last in an important match for MCC, their opening fixture against Yorkshire, did. King did not disappoint, with 46 out of a meagre total of 98 (only 89 from the bat). His best innings for Leicestershire were his two centuries, both against Worcestershire: 130 away to help his county to victory after 22 wickets had fallen on the first day; and a ‘plucky’ 109 not out in a losing cause at home in four and a quarter hours, when he was twice injured before he made his first run after twenty uncomfortable minutes and was later ‘repeatedly struck by [G.A.] Wilson’. Not once in these two matches did he fall to Simpson-Hayward, who twice ensnared five victims. For his county against London County, he took the wicket of W.G.Grace for the first time of three in consecutive seasons. 25 After inducing him to snick a ball just over his stumps King had him caught for eight very low down by Geeson at first slip, ‘one of the best catches ever seen at the Palace . . . W.G. did not like the From Journeyman to Master 50