Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

might have been? In the course of one over King, who had taken the wicket of Ransford at Leicester for 13, had him missed in the slips by MacLaren on the same score; and then watched as Hayward dropped Trumper off his bowling before he had scored. Wisden records that he ‘at one point bowled extremely well, but he never got over the disappointment of seeing’ these blunders in the field. On the third day England suffered ignominious defeat, being dismissed in the second innings on a good wicket for a mere 121, after which Australia easily knocked off the requisite runs for the loss of Bardsley. (A full scorecard can be seen at Appendix Two to this book.) Although King made only four, he could perhaps have taken some consolation in the fact that he was dismissed by the principal destroyer, Warwick Armstrong, who bowled him with a superb ball that came back up the slope. Since Armstrong was a leg-break bowler and he was bowling from the Nursery End, Gideon Haigh comments that ‘it appears . . . Armstrong was the first Australian to bowl a wrong ’un in England, turning Bosanquet’s weapon back on its creators’. The Australian captain M.A.Noble confirms that the ball was a ‘wrong-un’, that is ‘the off-spin with the leg-break action’. Armstrong bowled two batsmen in this way – the other was Hirst – but King was the first, thus giving Leicestershire an unlikely, and unwelcome, double. Sam Coe had, of course, been the first batsman in first-class cricket to be dismissed by a googly; in 1900, he was stumped for 98 by W.P.Robertson, just short of his first first-class century, off Bosanquet, with a ball that bounced, according to reports, four times. King was not called upon to bowl again; nor to play for England again. Lord Hawke came home from France, chaired the selectorial meetings once more, ignored his batting and perhaps made a decision based more on King’s figures than reports of his bowling, which he had not of course himself witnessed. The whole muddle-headed selection is nicely summed up by A.A.Thomson: ‘It could be said, without flogging a dead horse too hard, that . . . the selectors went mad and England in the Second Test went into battle with only one fast bowler; the only batsmen to put up a fight being the wicket-keeper, Lilley, and J.H.King, who, though a medium-slow bowler, opened the bowling with Hirst, made top score . . . and was never picked for England again. For the third game the selectors dropped King, the only man who had The Test-Match Player 74