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 part of the Philadelphia team 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 "gentlemen cricketers"—men of independent wealth who did not need to work. King, an amateur from a middle-class family, was able to devote time to cricket thanks to a job set up by his teammates.
A skilled batsman who proved his worth as a bowler, King set numerous records in the continent of North America during his career and led the first-class bowling averages in England in 1908. He successfully competed against the best cricketers 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 develop the art of swing bowling in the sport. Sir Pelham Warner described Bart King as "one of the finest bowlers of all time", and Donald Bradman called him "America's greatest cricketing son."
Early and personal life
King was born in Philadelphia on October 19, 1873.), King married Fannie Lockhart; the marriage lasted for fifty years. King's wife died in 1963, and he died in 1965 in his native Philadelphia two days before his 92nd birthday.
Bart King was regarded by many of his contemporaries as an affable 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. He is said to have spoken for ninety minutes at a dinner during his last tour to England, punctuated every few seconds with laughs. The dinner guests were kept laughing even while King spoke with a dead-pan expression. One man who attended the dinner 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."
Arthur Mailey described him as a "tall, beautifully built, American Adonis."
Cricketing career
right|thumb|King played most of his Philadelphia club career at the [[Belmont Cricket Club.]]
Like most young American men of this era, Bart King came to cricket only after first playing baseball. He began to play club cricket at Tioga Cricket Club in 1888, aged 15,
King played for Tioga until 1896, when he joined Belmont Cricket Club. King joined the Philadelphian cricket team for three tours of England while playing at Belmont. King's most dominating matches came during these tours, playing with the premier American team of the era.
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 in a three-day match starting September 29.
On a small ground at Belmont, the September grass was coarse. It had been rolled so that the ball moved very quickly across the ground. The Australian side, fielding first, dropped many catches and could not cope with the short boundary, allowing the Philadelphians to reach a huge total of 525 runs. King came in to bat last, at number 11, making 36 runs. The leading Australian bowlers, Hugh Trumble and George Giffen, took 2 for 104 and 0 for 114 respectively. When the Australians came to bat, they hoped that they would, by now, have recovered from their tiring journey, but ran into problems when dealing with Bart King's developing swing bowling. The side was all out for 199, with King taking 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. The Australians won the return match on October 6 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." Previous tours had tended to involve amateur English sides with a low level of competition. In 1897, the tour started on June 7 at Oxford, ending in late July at The Oval almost 2 months later. The schedule included fifteen matches against 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 worthwhile to put their best elevens onto the field. He then took 7 wickets for 13 runs, and Philadelphia dismissed Sussex for 46 in less than an hour. at a batting average of just over 20. Then came the Lancashire match at Old Trafford Cricket Ground. The Philadelphians won next morning by nine wickets. 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 Lord Alverstone at a banquet after the match. After this, the first-class matches began with Worcestershire on July 9. Again the Philadelphians won and again Hordern and King took most of the wickets. This trend continued throughout the tour. In the first-class matches that King played, the Philadelphians recorded four wins and six losses. Although he was already 35 years old, King had posted extraordinary numbers in his bowling. He topped the bowling averages for the entire 1908 English cricket season at 11.01. This mark was not bettered until 1958, when Les Jackson of Derbyshire posted an average of 10.99. This record came in a four-year period during which King focused on club cricket in Philadelphia, when he won the city's batting award three times and the bowling award four times. The Times newspaper in the UK ran an obituary for him, which quoted Plum Warner as saying that: "Had he been an Englishman or an Australian, he would have been even more famous than he was."
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 back and 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". 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."