Bart King
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 United States of America (USA) |
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| Batting style | Right-handed batsman | |
| Bowling type | Right-arm fast | |
| First-class record | ||
| Matches | 65 | |
| Runs scored | 2134 | |
| Batting average | 20.51 | |
| 100s/50s | 1/8 | |
| Top score | 113* | |
| Balls bowled | 13729 | |
| Wickets | 415 | |
| Bowling average | 15.65 | |
| 5 wickets in innings | 38 | |
| 10 wickets in match | 11 | |
| Best Bowling | 10/53 | |
| Catches/Stumpings | 67/0 | |
| First class debut: 29 September 1893 Last first class game: 4 October 1912 Source: Cricket Archive |
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John Barton "Bart" King (October 19, 1873–October 17, 1965) was an American cricketer, active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. King was one of the Philadelphian cricketers that played from the end of the 19th century until the outbreak of World War I. This period of cricket in the United States was dominated by gentleman players — men of independent wealth who did not need to work. King was an amateur from a middle-class family, who was able to play based solely on his skill thanks to a job set up by his teammates. He was regarded as a man of great character. His colleagues and opponents regularly commented on his ability to keep everyone around him laughing.[1] Even as he dismissed batsmen he was able to remain friends with them off of the cricket ground.
King was a very skilled batsman, but really proved his worth as a bowler. During his career, he set numerous records in North America and at least one first-class bowling record.[2] He competed with and succeeded against the best cricketers in the world from England and Australia. King was the dominant bowler on his team when it toured England in 1897, 1903, and 1908. He dismissed batsmen with his unique delivery, which he called "the angler," and helped to perfect swing bowling in the sport. Many of the great bowlers of today still use the strategies and techniques that he developed.[3] Sir Pelham Warner described Bart King as one of the finest bowlers of all time,[4] and Donald Bradman called him "America's greatest cricketing son."[5]
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[edit] Early and personal life
King was born in Philadelphia in 1873. Early in his life, he worked in the linen trade. Although this was the family business, his father later allowed him to leave it to enter the insurance industry. King was not a member of the aristocratic and wealthy families of Philadelphia that produced many of the era's top cricketers. King's obituary in Cricket Quarterly suggests that his career in insurance was set up for him by those families to allow him to continue playing the game. In 1913, King married a young woman by the name of Lockhart. The marriage lasted for fifty years. King's wife passed away in 1963, and he died in 1965 in his native Philadelphia just two days short of his 92nd birthday. This was also the year which saw the USA gain membership in the ICC that was denied to them during his career.[6][7]
Bart King was regarded by many of his contemporaries as a likeable person. Ralph Barker called him the Bob Hope of cricket thanks to his quips and stories. King was also noted for making jabs at opponents, but leaving them laughing at themselves. The same held true when he would question umpires that turned down his appeals. On his last English tour he is said to have spoken for ninety minutes at a dinner that were punctuated every few seconds with laughs. While King spoke with a dead-pan expression, the dinner guests were kept laughing. One man that was there noted that King "told his impossible tales with such an air of conviction...that his audiences were always in doubt when to take him seriously. He made their task doubly difficult by sprinkling in a fair mixture of truth with his fiction."[1]
[edit] Cricketing career
Like most young American men of this era, Bart King came to cricket only after first playing baseball. It was not until he was 15 years old that he first turned to cricket.[6] In 1888 he began playing club cricket for Tioga in Philadelphia, starting out as a batsman.[4] This was one of the premier Philadelphian cricket clubs, though there are no matches recorded for him until the next year. In the 1889 season, King was tried as a bowler because of his physique, and he took 37 wickets for 99 runs that year.[8]
King played for Tioga until 1896, when he joined the Belmont Cricket Club. It was while a member of Belmont that King joined the Philadelphian cricket team for three tours of England. King's most dominating matches came during these tours, playing with the premier American team of the era.
[edit] Australia in Philadelphia
In 1893, the Australian team stopped by Philadelphia on its way home from a tour of England. Australia fielded a strong side, but the team was tired after a long tour and trip. In spite of this fatigue, the Australians chose to face the full strength of the Gentlemen of Philadelphia. On a small ground at Elmwood, the September grass was coarse and rolled very fast. The Australian side, fielding first, dropped many balls and could not cope with the short boundary. They allowed the Philadelphians to run up a total of 525 runs. King came up to bat last and made 36 of them. The leading Australian bowlers, George Giffen and Hugh Trumble, took 0 for 114 and 2 for 104 respectively. When the Australians came to bat, they had hoped that they were recovered from their journey, but they soon encountered Bart King's developing swing. The side was all out for 199, and King took 5 wickets for 78 runs. The Australians followed on and were all out again for 268, allowing the Gentlemen of Philadelphia to win by an innings and 68 runs. The cricket world was stunned that a single American city could turn out a side capable of beating the full strength of Australia. This win came about with the help of Bart King's batting and, more importantly, his bowling. The Australians won the return match by six wickets, but the Australian captain, Jack Blackham, said to the Americans, "You have better players here than we have been led to believe. They class with England’s best."[1]
[edit] Tour of England in 1897
Having won the Childs Bowling Cup, the premier award for bowling in American cricket, for the first time in 1896,[1] King joined the Philadelphian cricket team's tour of England in 1897. The tour undertaken by the Philadelphian cricketers was very ambitious. Though the results may have been less satisfactory than hoped for by promoters, the tour was arranged mainly for educational purposes and few of those on the American side expected to win many matches.[9] Previous tours had tended to involve amateur English sides with a low level of competition. In 1897 a schedule was made including all of the top county cricket teams, the Oxford and Cambridge University teams, the Marylebone Cricket Club, and two other sides, though only a few of the counties thought it worth while to put their best elevens onto the field.[9] Starting on 7 June at Oxford, the tour lasted for two months and ended in late July at The Oval. While it initially aroused some curiosity, many English fans lost interest until Bart King and the Philadelphians met the full Sussex team at Brighton on 17 June. In the first innings, King proved his batting worth on a fourth-wicket stand of 107 with John Lester.[10] He then took 7 wickets for 13 runs and the team dismissed Sussex for 46 in less than an hour.[1] In the second innings, King took 6 for 102 and helped the Philadelphians to a victory by 8 wickets.[6]
Despite the excitement surrounding King's performance, the Americans did not fare well overall. Fifteen matches were played, but only two were won while the team lost nine and earned a draw in four. The other win of the tour came against Warwickshire. During this match he took 5 for 95 and 7 for 72 and scored 46 runs.[8] According to the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack King proved himself to be the best bowler on the American side and had to do much of the work. He bowled three hundred overs more than anyone else. His average was just over 24 runs each for 72 wickets. In addition to his work bowling, King scored 441 runs[11] with an average of just over 20.[9]
[edit] Tour of England in 1903
Following the 1897 tour, many counties were interested in King. It was thought that he would not play as a professional, so alternative means of remuneration had to be found. One county reportedly offered to arrange a marriage with a widow who had an income of 7000 pounds per year.[8] King ended up returning to the United States, and doing very well in club play there. In 1903, his countrymen came back to England. This proved to his most masterful tour, especially against Lancashire and Surrey. King played in 13 of the 15 matches on the tour, having missed two with a strained side. His first match was against Cambridge University and he bowled 5 for 136 and 4 for 28. He followed that against Oxford University with an 8 for 39 in the first innings, though the match was eventually called on account of rain. He took 2 for 26 against Gloucestershire in the first innings but did not bowl in the second. He also took 7 for 51 and 2 for 28 against a strong MCC side at Lord’s.[12] Then came the Lancashire match at Old Trafford Cricket Ground.[1]
In the first innings against Lancashire, King bowled 27 overs and took 5 wickets for 46 runs. After the Philadelphians surpassed Lancashire, their lead was quickly wiped away in the second innings. With the wind strong over King’s left shoulder he went in to dominate the opposition. In his first over after the lunch break, he yorked one of the opening batsmen and his replacement with successive balls. In the second over he clean bowled two more batsmen, and in the third he bowled a stump out of the ground. He had taken 5 wickets for 7 runs. After this performance, King had to be rested in the field and one wicket was taken. On his return, he took four more to finish with 9 for 62. The Philadelphians won next morning by nine wickets.[8]
Against Surrey on 6 August, King was overpowering again. It was in this match that King gave what Barker called his finest first-class performance ever.[1] In the first innings, he scored 98 runs before being run out and took 3 for 89. In the second innings he made 113 not out and took 3 for 98.[13] Surrey lost the match by 110 runs. Apparently, King was so exhausted after his performance that he fell asleep during a speech by the Lord Chief Justice at a banquet after the match.[6]
[edit] Tour of England in 1908
As noted, King toured England with the Philadelphians again in 1908 and posted extraordinary numbers in his bowling. Though he was 35 years old, it was on this tour that King topped the England bowling averages with the figure of 11.01. This was not bettered until 1958 when Les Jackson of Derbyshire posted an average of 10.99.[3]
[edit] Remaining matches
King is also noted for holding the bowling record against Canada. On a rainy afternoon at Philadelphia in 1906, King bowled into a slight breeze to the Canadian batsmen to capture 8 wickets for 17 runs.[14] This record came as part of a four year period where King was focused on inter-club play in Philadelphia. During this time, he won the city's batting award three times and the bowling award four times.[1] In 1912, he took part in his last two international matches against Australia and his performances were of high quality for a bowler nearing his fortieth year.[6] In the first match, which Philadelphia won by 2 runs, he took 9 for 78 runs and in the second, which Australia won by 45 runs, he took 8 for 74. After that season he joined the Philadelphia Cricket Club. King's twenty-seven year career ended when he played his last game for the Philadelphia Cricket Club against Frankford, on 20 July 1916. On this occasion, his bowling and batting were nothing remarkable but his batting average was 43.33 for that final season.[6]
[edit] Achievements and legacy
Though King focused on bowling throughout his career, he was also a very fine batsman. In 1906, King scored 344 not out for Belmont against the Merion Cricket Club to set a North American batting record which still stands. The season before he had established the record that he broke with a 315 at the Germantown Cricket Club.[14] He also scored 39 centuries in his North American career and he topped 1,000 runs in a season six times. In four of these seasons, he also took over 100 wickets—accomplishing this feat four other times, as well. In his whole career he scored 19,808 runs for an average of 36.47 and took 2,088 wickets for an average of 10.47.[6] Bart King took all 10 wickets in an innings on three occasions (on five others he took 9 wickets). One of these occasions, against the Gentlemen of Ireland, in 1909 was followed by his taking the hat-trick in the second innings.[15]
There is an apochryphal story of King emulating a famous baseball pitcher of the day, Rube Waddell, by sending all his fielders back into the pavilion and finishing an innings off without any. King and Belmont were playing in the Halifax Cup at Elmwood Cricket Ground. Some versions of the story have him banishing the fielders and then calling one of them to a position 22 yards back and 4 yards to the leg side. This fielder was stationed there to pick up the bails which landed at his feet after King bowled his trademark "angler."[8] This story was disputed some years later by the captain of the Trenton team that was being played. He claimed that when he "went in to bat that afternoon, King had four balls left in his over." He claimed to have "hit the first delivery to cover point but of course there was no one there. The ball stopped within three feet of the boundary, and King had to chase it. By the time he got back we had run six."[1] The captain claimed to be the only batsmen to have hit four consecutive sixes off of King, but commended the bowler on his ability to spin a tale.
Thanks to his dominant performance over his career and his renown in the world of cricket, King was elected an honorary member of the Incogniti Cricket Club in 1908 and an honorary life member of the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1962.[6] When Plum Warner was asked to name the greatest bowler who ever lived, he said that John Barton King, "at the top of his power and speed, was at least the equal of the greatest of them all."[1]
[edit] The Angler
King is credited as one of the first bowlers to perfect swing bowling. Other bowlers of that time could sometimes get the ball to swing but King could do so at will with an old or new ball.[8] He made use of a lethal delivery which he called "the angler", a product of his experience as a baseball pitcher to confuse the English batsmen.[3] He would come in with the ball clasped above his head in both hands as would a baseball pitcher. He was famous for his late swing—in and out—and would produce the in-swinger with his right hand coming down from a point over his left shoulder.[1] He described it as an in-swinger which, if properly bowled, would change direction sharply in the last 10 or 15 feet of flight. King used this ball only sparingly and then against good batsmen.[16] After a tour in 1896 George Giffen said "the Philadelphians really have some high-class players, but it was the fact of their bowlers playing us with baseball curves that upset our batsmen."[1]
The impact of King's bowling was very far-reaching. Before King and the Philadelphians toured England, that country's fast bowlers, depended on sheer pace with a possible last second application of spin. After seeing King's work with the ball, many became "complete anglers" in the Barton King mold. A bowler like Yorkshire's George Hirst started to shatter stumps with balls that ducked in with the force of a hard throw in from mid-off. The "swingers" became even more numerous through the decades.[3]
[edit] Teams
[edit] International
[edit] USA first-class
[edit] Philadelphia club
[edit] Statistics links
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Barker, Ralph (1967). Ten Great Bowlers. Chatto and Windus, 124-155.
- ^ Rolfe, John (1994). Everything You Want to Know About Sports (Sports Illustrated for Kids). New York: Bantam Books for Young Readers. ISBN 0-553-48166-5.
- ^ a b c d Synge, Allen (2007). SABR UK Examiner no.10: Baseball and Cricket: Cross-Currents. Society for American Baseball Research (UK Chapter). Retrieved on January 31, 2007.
- ^ a b Wisden - 1966 - Obituaries in 1965. John Wisden & Co (1966). Retrieved on January 31, 2007.
- ^ Bradman, Donald (1998). The Art of Cricket. Robson Books.
- ^ a b c d e f g h 1966, "Obituary of John Barton King", Cricket Quarterly 31(1): 61
- ^ Cricinfo - Players and Officials - Bart King. Cricinfo (2007). Retrieved on January 31, 2007.
- ^ a b c d e f Ramachandra Guha, Ed (2001). The Picador Book of Cricket. New York: Picador. ISBN 0-330-39612-9.
- ^ a b c Wisden - 1898 - The Philadelphians in England, 1897. John Wisden & Co (1898). Retrieved on January 31, 2007.
- ^ Sussex v Philadelphians in 1897. CricketArchive (2003-2007). Retrieved on February 9, 2007.
- ^ First-class Batting and Fielding in England for 1897 (Ordered by Runs). CricketArchive (2003-2007). Retrieved on February 9, 2007.
- ^ Marylebone Cricket Club v Philadelphians in 1903. CricketArchive (2003-2007). Retrieved on February 9, 2007.
- ^ Surrey v Philadelphians in 1903. CricketArchive (2003-2007). Retrieved on February 9, 2007.
- ^ a b Boller, Kevin (2007). Cricinfo - Canada. Cricinfo. Retrieved on January 31, 2007.
- ^ Cricket Archive - Philadelphians v Ireland in 1909. Cricket Archive (2003-2007). Retrieved on January 31, 2007.
- ^ Marder, John; Adrian Cole (2007). Cricinfo - Cricket in the USA. Cricinfo. Retrieved on January 31, 2007.
