Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

Chapter Seven The Test-Match Player ‘Please be Lords Monday to play England if chosen Leveson Gower County Ground Bournemouth.’ Thus ran a telegram to King dated 11 July 1909. Perhaps never in the history of cricket, at least before the ‘d’Oliveira affair’, has so much wrath been incurred by Test selectors as in 1909. The announcement of the fourteen players from whom the team would be chosen on the morning of the Lord’s Test against the Australians ignited a conflagration that attracted far more fire-raisers than fire-fighters. The selection committee for 1909 was Lord Hawke as chairman, C.B.Fry and H.D.G.Leveson Gower. When F.S.Jackson had declined the captaincy, A.C.MacLaren was appointed in his stead for the series. Even before the commencement of the First Test Hawke had retired to Aix-les-Bains for reason of health; while Fry, having taken part in the selection of the party, was not involved in the choice of the final eleven, or in the match as a player, since he was appearing in a long drawn-out case at the Temple where he revelled in exchanging courtesies with the distinguished counsel Sir Rufus Isaacs. In his autobiography Fry admits, ‘I did not like the team when we chose it’, but he prided himself on having ‘rather forced’ his fellow county colleague Albert Relf, England’s only successful bowler, on the other members. There were two enforced changes for Lord’s from the team at Edgbaston: Fry was unavailable and Colin Blythe’s nervous disposition, not for the only time, rendered him, on the advice of a specialist, unfit to be considered. In addition Gilbert Jessop – ‘indispensable’ according to Wisden – Wilfred Rhodes and George Thompson were omitted. In the party for the Test were Tom Hayward, George Gunn (whose selection in place of Rhodes Wisden averred a blunder), Relf, Schofield Haigh and, from Leicestershire, King and Tom Jayes, Astill’s uncle. No thought was given to the incomparable but contumacious and, at times, even rebarbative Sydney Barnes. 69