Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

chanceless century in the home match against Worcestershire, shepherding an abject tail after he and Wood had put on 131 together; and made a dogged unbeaten 86 in a losing cause at Southampton straight after bowling 39.5 overs in which he took five wickets for 114. An improvement of nearly 17 in his batting average in 1913 must be weighed against a decline of nearly 20 in that for bowling: indeed he took a mere 27 wickets (all in the Championship). I can find no properly satisfactory explanation for this deterioration, which affected Astill also, though to a lesser degree, and Wisden is no help herein. He had been engaged to coach the young members at the start of the season, but he can hardly have been jaded. More likely reasons are that the wickets were drier and therefore less suitable for King, and that the county gave extended and successful trials to two new opening bowlers, George Geary and Alec Skelding, while a third, Bill Shipman, recovered his form. They were all, however, somewhat expensive, and Leicestershire dropped a position (although this disappointment must have palled in comparison with the relief felt at escaping that winter from a financial crisis that threatened the county club’s very existence). King only once took as many as four wickets in an innings – and they were expensive at 104 runs (against Lancashire at Leicester). In the first half of the season he batted respectably, his 80 at Southampton ensuring with Harry Whitehead safety and 66 against Nottinghamshire promising the salvation that was promptly lost on his dismissal; but his best innings was probably a ‘masterly’ top-score of 37 out of 97 (before he was caught off his glove) in which he for once defied a rampant Hirst whose trickiness was aided by a strong crosswind. His three centuries all came in the space of a fortnight in August. First, directly following his saving of a game against the ‘Peakites’ with an ‘assured’ 82, in a drawn game on an easy pitch at Aylestone Road he took 111 and 100* off Northamptonshire with sixteen fours in each innings, the first ‘in one of his brightest moods’, with ‘splendidly-timed off-drives’ and ‘grace and accuracy of cutting’. This was the second time, after Wood’s marvellous performance two years earlier, that this feat of two hundreds in a match had been accomplished for the county, and also the second time for King after his double for the Players. Nonetheless, his highest innings of the year was more valuable: Leicestershire was forced to follow on at Worcester, but Maturity 86