Bart King - Achievements and Legacy

Achievements and Legacy

Though King focused on bowling throughout his career, he was also a very fine batsman. In 1905, he established a North American record batting record by scoring 315 at the Germantown Cricket Club. The following year, he scored 344 not out for Belmont against the Merion Cricket Club, setting a North American batting record which still stands. He scored 39 centuries in his North American career, and he topped 1,000 runs in six seasons. He took over 100 wickets in eight seasons, including a double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in four seasons. In his whole career, he scored 19,808 runs at an average of 36.47, and took 2,088 wickets at an average of 10.47. He took all 10 wickets in an innings on three occasions, and took 9 wickets in an innings five times. One of these occasions, in the Gentlemen of Ireland's first innings in 1909, was followed by a hat-trick in the second innings.

There is an apocryphal story of King emulating a famous baseball pitcher of the day, Rube Waddell, by sending all his fielders back into the pavilion and finishing off the opponent's innings on his own. King and Belmont were playing Trenton 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 (20 m) back and 4 yards (3.7 m) 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." This story was disputed some years later by the captain of Trenton, who 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." The captain claimed to be the only batsmen to have hit four consecutive sixes off 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. 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."

King is credited as one of the first bowlers to perfect swing bowling. Other bowlers in his time could sometimes get the ball to swing, but King could do so at will with an old or new ball. 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. 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. He described it as an in-swinger which, if properly bowled, would change direction sharply in the last 10 or 15 feet (4.6 m) of flight. King used this ball only sparingly and only against good batsmen. After a tour to Philadelphia by an Australian side 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."

The impact of King's bowling was very far-reaching. Before King and the Philadelphians toured England, English 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.