Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

Chapter Five The Match of the Season In years when there was no touring team from Australia the match of the season was, as it had been in pre-Test times, the annual encounter between the Gentlemen and Players at Lord’s. Indeed, so popular had it become that additional matches were sometimes scheduled at The Oval, Prince’s, Hove, Scarborough and Hastings. Since in 1904 there were no Australians, the match had no rival for the cricketing social occasion of the year. Two fine teams had been selected, and on the morning of Monday, 4 July, grooms were adorning their well-curried horses, butlers were packing hampers with choice foods and wines, ladies and gentlemen were putting the finishing touches to their toilettes. Then a sudden crisis arose: Johnny Tyldesley, who three days before in scoring 225 on a beautiful wicket at Trent Bridge had been hit severely in the ribs, decided that he was unfit to play. King, who was still on the MCC staff and, because Leicestershire had no match, at Lord’s that morning, was chosen to take his place. He had been in fairly good form so far that season, but serendipity enabled him to take part in the match that brought him immediate fame and for which, over a hundred years later, he is still best remembered. The match lived up to anticipation: Wisden described it as ‘emphatically the match of the season’, being ‘played through from the first ball to the last in the keenest and most sportsmanlike way’ and ending ‘amid intense excitement late on the third afternoon’. It was, moreover, enjoyed by a huge crowd, undoubtedly the largest of King’s career so far, with no fewer than 33,202 spectators paying for admission over the three days. ‘From some cause’, reports Wisden , ‘probably owing to a little damp remaining in the ground, the ball . . . kicked up in a way that recalled to old habitués the cricket that used to be seen at Lord’s in the sixties.’ Despite valiant resistance from Tom Hayward on a bumpy pitch Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard, enjoying the most prolific season of his career, and first-change Bernard Bosanquet swiftly 55