He was one of the greatest bowlers of all time - maybe even greatest. He was so good that he once sent the rest of his team off and took on the opposing batsmen single-handed. So how come most of us have never heard of Bart King? Martin Kettle on cricket's forgotten giant

It was once said of Bart King that he was the best known American of his time in England. When he came over to Britain, people would recognise him in the street and stop to shake his hand. Since King was a contemporary of Buffalo Bill and the Wright Brothers, this means that his fame must have been special. But what makes it extraordinary is that King was famous for being a cricketer - an American cricketer.

Nowadays, as everyone knows, Americans don't play cricket. The surprise is that until well into the 20th century, they not only played cricket, but played it almost to test match standard. Until baseball overwhelmed it less than 100 years ago, cricket was America's most widely played team game. It thrived, especially in the Philadelphia area, where more than 120 clubs existed at various times. In 1905, more than 400 matches were played in Philadelphia in a single season. Almost all the players were American, and King was the best.

On three occasions before the first world war, Philadelphia was strong enough to mount first-class tours of England - playing and beating county sides. There was talk of the US becoming the fourth test match-playing nation, although that prize went to the West Indies. As late as 1912, Philadelphia defeated an Australian test team by two runs. King, then 39, took nine for 78 in the match with his fast inswing. After two decades in the game he still reigned as Philadelphia's king of swing.

Within a generation, cricket in the US had all but collapsed. One or two Wasp schools and colleges on the east coast continued to play. Touring sides occasionally crossed the Atlantic to play knockabout cricket at club level, as they still do today. In Hollywood, a team which boasted Errol Flynn as opening batsman and Boris Karloff as wicketkeeper, kept going into the 40s. But America's years as a cricket power were over, never to return.

Yet the ghosts remain. As you drive out of Philadelphia along the road they call the Main Line, through exclusive Edwardian suburbs full of houses like those in which Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant lived in The Philadelphia Story, you reach the Merion Cricket Club. "Merion CC - 1865" is carved in the stone arch at the entrance.

A vast and splendid pavilion still looks out on to a cricket field that is the equal of any in the world. Here, in 1906, King hit the highest score ever made in North America - 344 not out.

Less than a mile away, at Haverford College, there is actually a Sunday afternoon match in progress on Cope Field, where cricket has been played since 1877. Tucked away in the college buildings is one of the most unexpected museums in the US, the CC Morris Cricket Library and Collection. Amar Singh, the library secretary, shows me some of his treasures, including the bat with which King made his great score, with which I play a few fantasy drives. There is a bat belonging to WG Grace, who played here in 1872 against "22 of Philadelphia" - WG took nine for 22 in the first innings and 13 for 45 in the second - and one donated by Sir Donald Bradman, who played here in 1932.

There is a souvenir of Gary Sobers' visit to the revived Philadelphia Cricket Festival as a guest in 1999. There is as good a collection of cricket blazers as you could ever expect to see, including the natty Hollywood CC number. Karloff's wicket-keeping gloves are on their way here, too. And in another glass case are King souvenirs, including the key to room 166 from the Hotel Metropole in Folkestone, brought back from Philadelphia's first tour of England in 1897.

King was the towering figure at the centre of Philadelphia's golden age of cricket. Statistics, beloved of cricket buffs, tell his story almost better than words. In his career, which lasted from 1892 to 1916, he took more than 2,000 wickets at an average of 10.47 runs each - a better average than any of his contemporaries in any country. In 1908, on his third tour to England, King topped the English bowling averages, the only American ever to do so. His 87 wick ets at a cost of 11.01 runs each remained the best figures for an English season until 1958. He was the first American to score a triple century - 315 for Belmont against Germantown in 1905 - and his 344 not out the following year remains the record.

"Without question the finest all-round cricketer ever produced in America," wrote his contemporary, John Lester. One of cricket's finest historians, Rowland Bowen, went even further: "Certainly one of the six leading bowlers in the world of all time, and arguably the best." When King died, aged 91, in 1965, Wisden said his greatness was "beyond question". The Cricket Quarterly called him "one of the greatest cricketers of all time".

Today, however, King is almost forgotten. His dates of birth and death are still reverently reprinted each year in Wisden, as are one or two of his records. But Philadelphia cricket has slipped into oblivion and King himself is all but unremembered in the city where he broke almost every record in US cricket.

If there is one place in Philadelphia where a memorial to him would be appropriate, it is the corner of 49th Street and Chester Avenue. When I told a former Philly cop that I was planning to visit the site of the Belmont club ground, where King played most of his cricket, he looked at me and said: "Sir, I would be very careful about doing that. Or, if you do, then go during daylight hours, keep your car doors locked and try not to draw attention to yourself."

Maybe the officer was right. They have seen better days at 49th and Chester. But you can still visualise how what is now a baseball diamond and an overgrown basketball court in the heart of largely black inner-city West Philadelphia could once have been a cricket field lined with plane trees, with the number 13 tram rumbling past, then as now. And could the grass have been any greener then? I doubt it.

It was on this grass that King performed the feat which, if he had done nothing else in cricket, would deserve to be remembered today for its brilliance. It took place in a match between Belmont and Trenton in 1901. Trenton, coming down from New Jersey, arrived without all their players, so Belmont put them in to bat, hoping that the latecomers would arrive in time to bat and that all 11 would be there by the time that Belmont began their reply.

That afternoon, King was unplayable. His fast-bowling ripped through the Trenton order. Before long, the ninth Trenton wicket fell - King had taken every one. The final Trenton batsman, the captain of the team, had arrived by then. As he walked to the wicket, his side in disarray, he made a challenging remark to King about how the collapse would never have happened if the whole team had been there at the start, as they should have been.

"Bart looked the captain over with an appraising eye," Lester later recalled. "Then he called the fielders over and sent them to the clubhouse." With that, King went back to the start of his run-up. When he turned to begin running in, King saw that Eddie Leech, the Belmont wicketkeeper was still in position. King called out to him. "Why, Eddie, Eddie, whatever are you doing there? I won't need you, Eddie. Join the rest."

As Leech departed, the Trenton captain lodged a protest. On the field there were now two batsmen, two umpires and King. The umpires consulted the laws. No, they decided, there was nothing that said a fielding side could not have fewer than 11 on the field - only that they could not have more. They waved play on. But now it was King's turn to hold things up. On second thoughts, he brought one fielder back, and positioned him 20 yards behind the wicket on the leg side. "To pick up the ball after the game is over, and return it to the umpires," he explained.

Finally, King ran in and bowled. It was the ball he always called his "angler", a fast inswinging yorker. It took the Trenton captain's leg stump, and the ball was deflected down the legside, coming to rest in front of the feet of the solitary Belmont fielder. King had taken 10 out of 10.

His contemporaries had little doubt about King's prowess. "The best swerver I ever saw in my life was J Barton King of Philadelphia," wrote CB Fry, the England captain. "Mr King was a magnificent bowler, very fast, very accurate, and we remember at Philadelphia in 1901 being bowled by an unexpected inswinger which we left alone," wrote Eric Wilson, the Yorkshire and England batsman.

To the end of his days, King remained the tall, thin, erect man who blew English county batting line-ups apart in the Golden Age. But there were few to remember him. One of the exceptions, although in the nick of time, was the Marylebone Cricket Club. In 1962, a mere 54 years after King last bowled on an English wicket, he was made an honorary life member of the MCC - the first and only American cricketer ever to be granted the accolade.

In the 50s, as a student at Haverford College in the Philadelphia suburbs, Amar Singh remembers seeing a "very tall, very gaunt" old man who would come unannounced to watch college cricket on Cope's Field, where students still play to this day. "He was an ardent supporter of the team. But not very talkative and very unassuming. He used to come to Haverfold regularly to watch us play. He sat on a chaise longue under the trees. We had no idea who he was. Now, of course, I just regret not questioning him about all his achievements."