Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

Newspapers and public opinion were most vociferous over the omission of Jessop and Walter Brearley, the right-arm Lancashire fast bowler who was enjoying a splendid season, and the inclusion of King and Jayes, although Cricket , while orthodox over Jayes, defended King’s selection as ‘a very happy one. It is always advisable to have a sound left-handed batsman in the side, and when there is available one who has been showing good form, and one, moreover, who is a very useful bowler, what is more natural than he should be picked. Of King it may truly be said that if he had been associated with a more prominent county his real worth would have been appreciated more as it deserved to be.’ On the first morning only Leveson Gower and MacLaren were left to make the final decision. Allen Synge surmises that ‘Shrimp’ Leveson Gower, having allowed himself to be overawed by MacLaren in the selection for the First Test, was now determined to assert himself. It is, however, difficult to know who thought exactly what: in a letter to Jessop, MacLaren says that he had wanted both him and Brearley in the team, whereas in his autobiography Leveson Gower writes: ‘I thought at the time, and still think, that it was a mistake [to omit Brearley], though the captain disagreed with me’. MacLaren also told George Beldam that he had been thwarted, presumably by Leveson Gower, over Jayes. There was also probably an element of complacency about selection, for England had won the First Test by the very comfortable margin of ten wickets and the Australians had fared poorly in the interim. That Test had, moreover, been won largely by two left-arm bowlers, Hirst and Blythe, who had taken all twenty Australian wickets between them. At Edgbaston, however, the pitch had been damp, whereas at Lord’s, although it had been under water two days previously, it was hard if not good. A fast right-arm bowler was needed to bring the ball into the right-handed batsmen down the slope. Fortuitously Brearley was present. Shortly before play was due to commence he was approached; but, his amour propre wounded through his initial omission, he declined the invitation on the excuse that his kit was already in Tonbridge and refused to wire for it. He then, as Synge writes, ‘hovered around the ground like a kind of Cassandra’, stationing himself under Leveson Gower’s box and crooning what he would have done had he been playing, until a policeman moved him on for carolling too soon before Christmas. Three days later his county match began at Tonbridge, where he took twelve for 117. 70 The Test-Match Player