Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

he has ever done before, and has promoted him at a stroke to the first rank of batting fame’, while the Morning Leader asserted that ‘King has enrolled himself among the immortals’. There was a ‘colonial’ team touring England that year – the South Africans. Although they were very successful, winning ten and losing only two of their 22 first-class matches, they had been awarded no Test. Instead a match had been arranged at Lord’s a week after the conclusion of Gentlemen v Players against ‘An England XI’. This was clearly not an English first team, and it lost by 189 runs: its only ‘redeeming feature’ was the batting of King who, mastering Kotze on this occasion, top-scored in both innings with 55 out of 167 and 72 out of 203. Only one other player reached the thirties in either innings, and King had the satisfaction of scoring more runs than the great ‘Ranji’. This time his bowling was also used, and all told he took four wickets for 91, twice dismissing Maitland Hathorn, the No.3 and highest scorer in the South African second innings. Perhaps surprisingly King was not considered for the Players at Lord’s the following year: he played instead for Leicestershire against Sussex. But he was chosen for The Oval match against a weak Gentlemen’s team, in which he was joined by three county The Match of the Season 58 Close-up of the mellowing, narrow-grained Gunn and Moore bat used by King to score two famous centuries for the Players at Lord’s in 1904.