WG Grace

by Low, Robert

  A finer innings could not be witnessed; good bowling (with several changes) being tried against him; but his runs were gained in admirable cricket form, not even the shadow of a chance for a catch being given. During the play he was frequently applauded; but upon retiring the applause was general.

  The bowling, moreover, was of the highest class, including James Lillywhite and Ned Willsher. But perhaps the most interesting fact about his innings was that it showed how thoughtful and thorough – one might even say professional – W.G. was about his cricket. During that summer, he had given a lot of thought to field placing in the first-class game. The prevailing othodoxy was that batsmen should play straight bowling defensively. Consequently, there was no need to have anyone fielding in the deep because big hitting was almost non-existent.

  The Grace brothers broke from this with a vengeance. E.M. was the first to cock a snook at the theory: to him, every ball was fair game, to be hit out of the ground if possible in his own unique flailing style. Observing his success, frequently from the non-striker’s end, W.G. determined to copy his example, and put it into practice against the Players of the South.

  Every time I had a ball the least bit overpitched, I hit it hard over the bowler’s head, and did not trouble about where it was going. My height enabled me to get over those that were slightly short and I played them hard: long-hops off the wicket I pulled to square leg or long-on, without the slightest hesitation.

  The Surrey club rewarded his display with a fine silver-plated bat. It was after this that he was first called ‘the Champion’.

  Precocious though W.G. was, another Grace was already hard on his heels. Fred, still only fifteen, was thought promising enough to be invited to join his older brother for Gentlemen of the South against I Zingari at Canterbury on 10 August, the second match of the Canterbury Week. But he was pressed into service to play for them against the North in the opening match of the week when the Kent slow bowler ‘Farmer’ Bennett was stuck in a train en route to the game.

  Fred batted at number eleven and made 1 and 5 not out. Against I Zingari W.G. scored 30 and 50 while Fred – ‘quite a youth’ remarked The Times – chipped in with 17 in the second innings.

  W.G.’s run aggregate in all matches for 1866 was remarkably similar to the previous season: 2,168, making him already the most prolific batsman in the country, with more than 600 in hand over the next man, C.F. Buller. His average significantly improved, to 54. And in his fifteen first-class innings his progress was apparent: a total of 640 runs at an average of 42.

  Around this time, there were rumours that Dr Henry Grace had made enquiries about the possibility of his son going up to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Perhaps there was no substance in it for when a cricketing cleric, Canon E.S. Carter, tried to persuade him to go up to Oxford in 1866 W.G. told him regretfully that he did not think his father would allow him to spare the time from his impending medical studies. Judging by his protracted studies at Bristol Medical School and elsewhere, W.G. might have had trouble in satisfying the Oxford or Cambridge examiners, but he would certainly have rewritten all the university cricket records. He always enjoyed playing the universities, putting their young attacks to the sword for the MCC year after year, and nothing gave him greater pride in later life than attending the University match at Lord’s in 1895 to watch his eldest son, W.G. junior, gain his first Cambridge Blue.

  But if he hoped to dominate the batting scene in the 1867 season, he was to be disappointed. It started badly and never really got going. First he suffered a sprained ankle and a split finger early in the season. Hardly had he regained fitness than he was struck down by scarlet fever in the middle of July and was off for six weeks. Even when he returned he was still feeling the effects of the illness and the rest of the season was a virtual write-off. Despite all his problems, it was W.G.’s best-ever season with the ball: he took thirty-nine first-class wickets at an average of only 7.51, bowling much more briskly than he was to do in later life.

  His performance with the bat in his first big match of the season, for England v Middlesex, was promising enough. It was Middlesex’s first game against an England XI, played for the benefit of the professionals on the Lord’s staff. Four thousand spectators turned out to support it, and W.G. treated them to a sparkling 75 in a dashing partnership with the Old Etonian Alfred Lubbock, who hit 129. W.G. then proceeded to take 6–53 as Middlesex were demolished by an innings.

  The dreadful state of the Lord’s pitch was demonstrated by his next two appearances there. South of the Thames played North of the Thames, a game put on to replace the North v South fixture, which had to be cancelled because of the schism betweeen the northern and southern players. The general standard of batting had improved but three innings had been completed by the end of the first day, the South being skittled for only 32 in their first knock, the North for 61. Set 73 to win in their second innings, the North were all out for 46 on the second day, W.G. taking 6–28 and E.M. snaffling four brilliant catches in his habitual position of point.

  It was much the same story when the Gentlemen met the Players at Lord’s on 8 July. Again thirty wickets fell on the first day, eleven of them to W.G. (three in the first, eight in the second). There was no doubt about the culprit: The Times dismissed the wicket as ‘a kind of tessellated, lumpy sward, where patches of rusty yellow strive with faded green’. Faced with 55 to win, W.G. and Alfred Lubbock saw the Gentlemen to an eight-wicket victory, W.G. hitting the winning runs with a cut for 3 to the grandstand.

  But when the teams squared up again at The Oval a week later, W.G. was missing, struck down with scarlet fever. It was six weeks before he was fit enough to return to the fray, for England versus a joint Surrey/Sussex team at The Oval on 26 August, in a benefit match for Tom Lockyer, the Surrey wicket-keeper. W.G. took eight wickets in the match and was loudly cheered by a large crowd, delighted to see their young hero recovered when he walked out to join E.M. at the wicket, though he was caught at slip for only 12.

  Despite his truncated season Lillywhite’s Annual was unstinting in its praise for W.G.: ‘A magnificent batsman, his defence and hitting powers being second to none and his scoring for the last three years marvellous. Plays for Gentlemen v Players and is a host in himself. A splendid fielder and thrower from leg.’

  The summer of 1868 was a long, hot one, producing fast, dry pitches and a series of remarkable scores. At Clifton College, one E.F.S. Tylecote, for instance, amassed 404 not out, albeit in an inter-school match, which would not have gone unnoticed by local boy Gilbert Grace. The high scoring led to fears that bowlers were not good enough to restrain the batsmen (the low scores of the previous summer being conveniently forgotten). The same worry is voiced nowadays whenever batsmen look like getting the upper hand, giving rise to the thought that cricketers and those who follow them do not change much.

  W.G. wasn’t complaining: he was now at the peak of his ability and to prove it rattled up three first-class centuries. While other bowlers toiled, he mopped up forty-four first-class wickets at an average of only 16.38. He also became the first batsman for more than half a century to score two centuries in the same first-class match. An exotic addition to a memorable season came in the shape of a touring team of Australian Aboriginals who, although not of the highest class, won hearts wherever they went and also entertained the crowds with exhibitions of boomerang throwing.

  It was around this time that the teenaged Lord Harris remembered being taken to Lord’s with a few other members of the Eton XI ‘for the express purpose of seeing W.G. bat and thereby having our own ideas improved’. It was a damp morning and the sight they were treated to was not of their hero (who was in fact only three years older than Harris) batting but of a young man in an overcoat arguing with the groundsman that the pitch was not fit to play on.

  The MCC v England fixture was revived in June at Lord’s for the first time for twelve years as a benefit for the Marylebone Cricketers’ Fund, the Lord’s professionals, an
d W.G. showed his superiority over his batting contemporaries with 29 out of 96 in England’s first innings and a superb 66 out of 179 in the second. Later that month he recorded his first century for the Gentlemen v the Players, 134 at Lord’s out of a total of 193. He himself regarded it as one of the best innings he ever played – even a half-century on the dreadful Lord’s square was a creditable achievement. The pitch that day was described thus: ‘… in nine cricket grounds out of ten within twenty miles of London, whether village green or county club ground, a local club could find a better wicket, in spite of drought and in spite of their poverty, than Marylebone Club supplied to the Players of England.’ Although the wicket was its usual skittish self, it was also hard and fast, which suited W.G.’s attacking style admirably. He went in at first wicket down after E.M. was run out for only one and, said The Times, ‘played one of the finest, and most assuredly the most prolific, innings at Lord’s during the present season’. Hardly anything passed his bat and to rub salt into the professionals’ wounds, Grace took 10–81 in the match to set up an eight-wicket win for the Gentlemen, which they followed up with a comprehensive innings and 87 runs victory at The Oval, their fourth in succession.

  His historic pair of centuries – 130 and 102 not out – came at one of his happiest hunting grounds, the St Lawrence ground at Canterbury, for South of the Thames against North of the Thames, which again replaced the old North v South game. The only other time it had been performed was back in 1817 by the great all-rounder William Lambert, playing for Sussex v Epsom at Lord’s, hardly a comparable fixture. Grace modestly described his achievement as much easier than his 134 at Lord’s as there were boundaries at Canterbury and he did not have to run so much. Oddly enough, his side still lost.

  Perhaps the most significant match he played in that summer was a two-day affair at Lord’s on 25 and 26 June, the first game played there by a club bearing the Gloucestershire name (it was not properly constituted until three years later). Appropriately for the family which was to dominate the county’s formative years, three of the Grace brothers played: E.M., W.G. and young Fred, still only seventeen but a batsman of the greatest promise. Their opponents were Middlesex Club and Ground, and the Graces bowled every ball against them, Gloucestershire emerging victorious by 134 runs. Although it would be another two years before they engaged another county, Gloucestershire were on their way.

  In the summer of 1869, W.G. reached two landmarks: his twenty-first birthday and membership of the MCC. So eager was the club to enrol the young tyro that he was proposed by the Treasurer, T. Burgoyne, and seconded by the Secretary, R.A. (Bob) Fitzgerald (also spelt FitzGerald), who had been a vigorous reformer since taking up the post in 1863 and who was to be a stout friend and ally of W.G. Indeed, his championing of W.G. can be seen as evidence of his radical ways, for while there was no doubt that he was the finest batsman in the land, his somewhat obscure origins (to the metropolitan eye at least) would not normally have qualified him for MCC membership.

  W.G. did not disappoint his patrons, making a century on his debut, 117 against Oxford University on Magdalen College’s ground at Cowley Marsh, and three more before the end of the season, against Surrey, Nottinghamshire and Kent. It was the start of a long and distinguished association in which W.G. was to score 7,780 runs, including nineteen centuries. In all matches in 1869, he scored nine centuries and was universally regarded as the finest batsman then playing the game. In its summary of the season, Lillywhite’s Annual went further: Grace was ‘generally admitted to be the most wonderful cricketer that ever handled a bat’. Young Fred was not far behind that summer, with five centuries to his name, including one score of 206.

  Such was W.G.’s dominance of the bowlers that his occasional failures were greeted with astonishment. The North v South fixture was resumed that year, though some diehard Northerners – Parr, Carpenter and Hayward – refused to participate. The teams played each other three times, once in the Canterbury Festival, and W.G. was unexpectedly bowled third ball by J.C. ‘Jemmy’ Shaw, the Nottinghamshire left-arm pace bowler. The Daily Telegraph commented: ‘Imagine Patti [the famous opera singer] singing outrageously out of tune; imagine Mr Gladstone violating all the rules of grammar – and you have a faint idea of the surprise created by this incident.’ The writer added that he fancied Mr Grace to take his revenge in the second innings, and the great man concurred. ‘I fancy I’ll do a little better this time,’ he said as he walked out to bat again and indeed he did, with a whirlwind 96 out of 134 in partnership with Jupp.

  The remark is evidence that the shy teenager of a few years earlier had matured into a self-confident young man. It was much the same story when MCC met Nottinghamshire. In the first innings W.G. was run out for 48 (still top score in an innings of 112) and was thoroughly outshone by the great Notts batsman Richard Daft, who scored an unbeaten 103. An essential element of W.G.’s make-up was his unrelenting competitiveness, whatever the standard of the match. He bet Daft that he would do better than him in his second innings and he was as good as his word. He thrashed a rapid 121, untypically offering several chances.

  The news of Grace’s exploits had naturally spread all over the country but there were few opportunities for cricket lovers in many areas to see him in action. His appearances at that time were reserved for a relatively few venues: club grounds around Bristol, where he was well known, Lord’s and The Oval in London, and a few county grounds in the south such as Canterbury and Hove. Gloucestershire were not yet part of the informal county championship, apart from that. The cricket season consisted of a motley collection of first-class fixtures: the MCC played the counties, the Gentlemen played the Players twice and sometimes more, the North played the South, Gentlemen of the South played Gentlemen of the North, and so on.

  At that stage of his career Grace rarely ventured out of the south or west. Thus the North v South fixture at Sheffield attracted great interest and a large crowd, for many of whom Grace was the chief attraction. (His Memorial Biography mistakenly described it as ‘his first appearance locally’, forgetting that he had captained the XVIII Youths of Nottingham and Sheffield there in 1866.) He did not let them down: opening the innings he rattled up 122 against a very strong attack. Charles Alcock later described it as ‘perhaps his most meritorious achievement’ of the season.

  I remember well, how, in the short space of two hours, against the bowling of Freeman, Emmett, Iddison and Wootton, he scored 122 runs on a wicket in every way suitable to the Northern bowling, and with George Freeman – then at his best – in such deadly form that no other Southern batsman could so much as look at him.

  The measure of W.G.’s superiority was that his ten team-mates contributed only 51. Then he took 6–57 when the North batted.

  Almost as great a performance came in the Gentlemen of the South v the Players of the South at that favourite hunting ground, The Oval, in mid-July. On a perfect pitch and in perfect weather the Players clocked up 475, batting through until after lunch on the second day of what was only a three-day match and W.G. had no more luck than anyone else with the ball. But the Players’ huge score proved to be no more than an aperitif for the main dish. W.G. opened with B.B. Cooper, who was to pop up in opposition to him in Australia a few years later. Less than four hours later they had put on 283 to break the first-class record for the first wicket, a record which stood until 1892. W.G.’s share was 180, Cooper’s 101. The Daily Telegraph’s observations provide a striking description of Grace in action at the crease:

  He has made even larger scores than the 180, but we doubt whether a better innings has ever been played by a cricketer past or present. The characteristic of Mr Grace’s play was that he knew exactly where every ball he hit would go. Just the strength required was expended and no more. When the fieldsmen were placed injudiciously too deep, he would quietly send a ball half-way towards them with a gentle tap and content himself with a modest single. If they came in a little nearer, the shoulders opened out and the powerful arms swun
g round as he lashed at the first loose ball and sent it away through the crowded ring of visitors until one heard a big thump as it struck against the farthest fence. Watching most other men – even good players – your main object is to see how they will defend themselves against the bowling; watching Mr Gilbert Grace, you can hardly help feeling as though the batsman himself were the assailant.

  The Gentlemen eventually totalled 553 all out and the match inevitably petered out in a draw.

  It was not success all the way for Grace that year. He took a Gloucestershire XI by train to play the boys of Marlborough College and on the way wagered that he would score a century and hit the ball into Sun Lane, a massive blow which had only ever been achieved once before. This was one bet that W.G. lost: he was bowled for only 6 by a boy named Kempe, who thus achieved what the cream of English cricket would have dearly loved to have done. The boy, a fast bowler, also dismissed the next batsman cheaply, who on returning to the pavilion remarked that he would have coped easily but for the bad light. To his great credit, Grace replied: ‘It was just the opposite with me. I could see it perfectly but I couldn’t play it.’

  To cap it, he attended evening service in the chapel, where ‘Sweet Saviour, Bless Us Ere We Go’ was sung. To the amusement of all, it contained the highly appropriate line:

  The scanty triumphs Grace hath won

  The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone.

  4 · THE NONPAREIL

  1870–1872

  IN the years 1870–6 W.G. developed from the age of twenty-one to twenty-eight. He was at the very peak of his powers during that time. His achievements as a batsman were prodigious – and while he was to remain at the summit of English cricket almost until the end of the century he never quite repeated the almost effortless accumulation of runs that flowed from his bat in this high summer of his career. He dominated the scene as no batsman had ever done before. The suspicion that this tall, dark and superbly athletic young man from the West Country was the greatest practitioner of his craft yet seen had been growing for several years. Now it became reality. He was the champion, the nonpareil, feted in prose and poetry, adored by the public, admired and feared by his playing contemporaries.