Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

quarter hours. King’s 142 was faultless and included 19 fours. After a fairly quiet start he ‘opened out in really brilliant fashion’, mainly from vigorous driving interspersed with cuts and skilful leg-side strokes. In bowling he began the season in fine form against Warwickshire as we have seen, and ended it with six- and five-wicket hauls against Kent and Surrey respectively. His outstanding performance of the season, however, was for MCC, for whom he scored 60 when opening the innings and was by far the most successful bowler in taking seven for 77 and five for 133 in the Lord’s match against Cambridge University. Oddly, Wisden did not think fit to mention his marathon bowling analyses (75.4 overs in all) in its 220-word summary. For the very last match of the season, while his colleagues Knight and Astill were playing for an England XI on Broadhalfpenny Down against a Fry-led Hambledon, King was chosen for Mr J.Bamford’s XI to give practice at the Oldfields Ground, Uttoxeter, to the MCC tourists in Australia the coming winter. He managed that with a fine 60* out of 180 in the first innings and had the satisfaction of catching Jack Hobbs off his own bowling for his only wicket. His county was clearly satisfied with his performances, for of the £50 awarded by the committee as ‘talent money’ King received the lion’s share of £9 5s 0d. ‘Reynard’, summing up Leicestershire’s summer of 1909 in the local paper, wrote of ‘another melancholy season’, even a ‘decedence from their [previous] mediocre standard’, ‘inconsistence [being] the snake in the root of [their] cricket’. King was ‘the stay of the side’ with batting and bowling figures similar to those of the previous year, but, though the only batsman to average over thirty for his county, he scored no century, the highest of his eleven fifties being 90 on an easy wicket at The Oval in the final match. More meritorious was his 59 against the same opponents at home which came near to saving the match, and 36 on a treacherous wicket at Northampton, where the only other batsmen to reach double figures in the last innings, after all hope had been abandoned at King’s fall, were Nos.10 and 11. Despite taking 55 economical Championship wickets, he had five in an innings only twice. Outside the championship he scored 56 against the Australians in the massive total of 567 by an England XI which contained four of his county colleagues. Knight scored a magnificent 163 with but a single chance, but King’s greatest distinction this season came in a match still to be described. Successes and Disappointments 68