Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

the club of the specific reason for his medical incapacity. He will have been confident that nobody would accuse him of malingering: his daughter remembered an occasion in a later year when he made use of a runner on account of a large and very painful carbuncle on his neck, whose lancing did not preclude his playing the following day; and the common reaction to muscular sprains was simply a hot bath with perhaps an application of liniment before the morrow’s play. This was probably preferable to the ‘treatment’ remembered by various county players directly after the Second World War who preferred not to mention their pains for fear of a pummelling on the trainer’s table. It is notable, finally, that King puts first his hopes for a good gate, with which a secretary would be most concerned, and only second his own anxious desire for his county’s success, although he expatiates on the latter. This is a letter written as from equal to equal, which was not the typical relationship before the Great War for a county secretary, albeit one only very recently appointed and a paid employee. Now an England player, he was unostentatiously conscious of his own worth. King’s trust that Leicestershire would be victorious was justified, his hope for his own speedy recovery not fulfilled. The injury unfortunately prevented him from playing in his benefit match, in late June, against neighbouring Nottinghamshire, which Leicestershire, batting on a damaged pitch after the opposition’s opening 336, lost by seven wickets. King’s consolation came from gates of £55 2s 9d, £7 3s 0d and £46 1s 3d which, when swelled by donations, resulted in an eventual sum for him of £275 19s 4d. As for the paltry sum on the second day, ‘Reynard’ wrote that King, ‘as one who rejoices in a garden . . . would welcome today’s gentle rain, as the beneficiaire . . . he would have preferred a continuance of the spell of dry weather. His roses and sweet peas might have drooped under the drought, but the “gate” would not have been so thin.’ Maturity 78 S.C.Packer, Leicestershire’s secretary from 1910 to 1932.