WG Grace

by Low, Robert

  His rise to the top coincided with the rapid growth and expansion of cricket itself. Previously the structure of the sport had resembled a series of small self-enclosed worlds that had very little to do with each other. Comparatively few players strayed out of their immediate circles, playing the same teams year after year, seeing the same old faces. But by the start of the 1870s this collection of amoebae was starting to coalesce and take on the shape that has persisted relatively unchanged to the present era. In particular, more and more county cricket clubs were being formed, and 1870 was notable for the creation of Gloucestershire as a proper county club. Inevitably, the driving force behind it was Dr Henry Grace.

  The idea of a county club had been germinating in his mind for some years. As far back as 1862, he had formed a Gentlemen of Gloucestershire side to play Gentlemen of Devon on 8 and 9 July on Durdham Down, where he had once practised with his friends in the early morning before dragging himself off to his medical classes. E.M. made 57 and the Gloucestershire men won by an innings and 77 runs.

  The following year the Gloucestershire fixture list had grown to three, two against Devon plus the match against Somerset at Bath, in which W.G. had made an unbeaten half century. That year a rival would-be county outfit, the Cheltenham and County of Gloucester club, was set up, presided over by Lord Fitzhardinge, reviving the memory of a short-lived organisation with a similar name (the County of Gloucestershire and Cheltenham Cricket Club), founded in 1842 and closed in 1846.

  Like its prototype, the Cheltenham-based club failed to prosper. It never approached the playing standard of its Bristol rival, largely because of the presence in the latter of the Grace brothers, three of whom featured in the Gloucestershire side which went to Lord’s and beat MCC and Ground in 1868.

  But it was not until 1870 that the Graces’ Gloucestershire club played its first inter-county game, against Surrey, in front of a huge and appreciative crowd – and a band – on Durdham Down. W.G. made 26 and 25 but it was with the ball that the Grace brothers were irresistible: W.G. had match figures of 9–92 and G.F. 7–87. The home side won the historic fixture by 51 runs. With the inspirational figure of W.G. carrying all before him, Gloucestershire’s first season went like a dream, for they won both their other fixtures by massive margins. In the return at the Oval, they crushed Surrey by an innings and 129 runs, the high spot being the county’s first century, inevitably scored by W.G., with 143.

  To show the capital that this result was no fluke, Gloucestershire went to Lord’s to demolish MCC by an innings and 88 runs thanks largely to W.G.’s magnificent 172 out of his county’s total of 276. In front of a small crowd, he and C.S. Gordon opened the batting and put on 73 in fifty-five minutes before a violent thunderstorm forced the players to retreat. The rain fell solidly for three hours, and when play resumed at 5 p.m. it was a sodden pitch and in appalling light. Nevertheless, Grace blazed away and with the total on 208 was 133 not out at stumps, having lost five partners including Fred, unfortunately run out when he slipped on the damp turf. Next day W.G. continued in the same vein, before holing out to point. ‘Thus one of the grandest innings ever played by “the champion” was brought to a conclusion, after a duration of four hours and a quarter, in which was some of the finest hitting and brilliant batting under most disadvantageous conditions of ground and light that has ever been seen in any match,’ was the Sportsman’s breathless summary. The Sporting Gazette agreed: ‘It was a marvellous performance even from the best batsman whom England has ever seen.’

  The performances of the Graces’ Gloucestershire team in 1870 seem to have been enough to convince their Cheltenham rivals that it was pointless to continue. In March 1871 the club was wound up and Lord Fitzhardinge became a vice-president of Dr Grace’s Gloucestershire, which was officially constituted the same year.

  The year 1870 was an important one in several other respects. The laws were changed to allow a bowler to change ends twice in an innings, compared to once allowed previously. The rift between the northern professionals and the south was healed and almost all the top northern pros played in the South v North game at Lord’s in early June, which was also notable for being the forty-four-year-old George Parr’s last game at headquarters.

  There was some dispute as to which was W.G.’s greatest innings in the summer of 1870. The conventional wisdom was that it was his 215 for the Gentlemen v the Players at The Oval, played between 14 and 16 July. Admittedly the Players did not field a strong bowling attack, but Grace was still majestic in his dominance once he had survived a sharp chance to Willsher at slip off the first ball of the third over. Had it been held, noted the Daily Telegraph, ‘it would have saved the Players an immensity of trouble and toil’. It was the highest innings ever recorded in the fixture until then, although Grace himself managed to better it by two the following year. It even included one eight, a mighty hit for seven past the Racket Court and, to crown it, an overthrow. W.G. was at the wicket for five hours and ‘never gave a ghost of a chance’. Said the Telegraph: ‘Independent of its numerical excellence, it is an innings that, for complete mastery over the bowling and for judicious “placing” the ball, never was surpassed.’ Another observer wrote that it was a ‘leviathan score’ obtained by ‘the most marvellous combination of defence, brilliant hitting, and truly wonderful rapidity of scoring ever witnessed’.

  Nor was it the last the Players saw of him that season. In the return match, Grace was again the only batsman able to cope with the notorious Lord’s pitch, hitting 109 out of 182. He was then the first victim of a hat-trick, remarkable in that the second was Fred Grace, clean bowled by a typical Lord’s ‘shooter’. The third was nineteen-year-old Charles Francis, just down from his first year at Oxford, a useful all-rounder who had taken seventeen wickets for Rugby v Marlborough at Lord’s the previous summer. The bowler, who presumably dined out on his achievement for the remainder of his short life (he died four years later, aged only forty-one), was Tom Hayward the elder.

  But those who saw it reckoned that another of Grace’s knocks that summer was much greater than any of his nine centuries, five of them in first-class fixtures. This was his second innings for MCC against Yorkshire, the strongest county that season, on another shocking Lord’s pitch. MCC were shot out for only 73 in their first innings by George Freeman (6–25) and Tom Emmett (4–39), who were considered to be the most effective opening attack of the time. W.G. made 10.

  In the second innings the Yorkshire fast bowlers were again a terrifying prospect, delivering bouncers and shooters in about equal proportions, but Grace stood up to them with heroic stoicism for a dogged 66 before being caught at point by Roger Iddison off Emmett (exactly the same way as he had been dismissed in the first innings). ‘Just before I was out, last man, Emmett bowled a ball which hit me very hard on the point of the left elbow, the ball flew into the air, and we ran a run before it came down into short-leg’s hands,’ Grace remembered, ‘but I could not hold the bat properly afterwards, and was glad when the innings was over.’

  ‘Mr Grace was a good deal hit about the body by the fast bowling – thanks, of course, to the bad wickets, but nevertheless he played throughout with unfailing pluck and was apparently as fresh at the close as he was at the commencement of his batting,’ said the Sporting Gazette. ‘A great display of skilled and successful batting played against A1 bowling on a difficult and false playing wicket. It was a masterpiece indeed,’ commented the Daily Telegraph. ‘Although hardly as fast as some of his efforts … one of his best and soundest of his many brilliant performances,’ added the Sportsman.

  C.E. Green was the only batsman to stay with him for any length of time, for 51. Nearly half a century later he wrote: ‘We were both cruelly battered about; indeed to this day I carry a mark on my chest where I was struck by a very fast rising ball from Freeman.’ His assailant also recalled the match many years on:

  Tom Emmett and I have often said it was a marvel the doctor was not either maimed or unnerved for the rest of hi
s days or killed outright. I often think of his pluck when I watch a modern batsman scared if a medium-paced ball hits him on the hand; he should have seen our expresses flying about his ribs, shoulders and head in 1870.

  Grace absorbed his punishment as defiantly as Brian Close accepted his battering by Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith in 1963. Like Close, W.G. was ‘loudly cheered’ as he returned to the pavilion with his body bruised and raw but his spirit undefeated. He himself inclined to the belief that it had indeed been his finest innings.

  He made another 66 for Gentlemen of the South v Players of the South and a fine 77 for the same side against Gentlemen of the North at Beeston, near Nottingham. This innings was memorable for being entirely outshone by the eighteen-year-old Fred, with a blazing innings of 189 not out, and a massive partnership with I.D. Walker, another of the prolific Walker clan (Middlesex’s answer to the Graces) who made 179 not out. One oddity of the southerners’ score was that the other eight batsmen totalled only 19 runs in a score of 482.

  The Grace brothers treated the people of Lincolnshire to a batting exhibition with an opening partnership of 166 for a United South XI against a Sleaford XXII in June. To W.G.’s amusement, the Yorkshire lob-bowler, Roger Iddison, who was guesting for Sleaford, placed a man at short leg and kept moving him closer to the bat until he stood only four yards away. Sure enough, when Iddison overpitched, W.G. cracked the ball straight at the unfortunate short leg, hitting him square on the ankle. The force of the stroke was underlined by the fact that the batsmen then ran four. To Grace’s astonishment (and admiration), the fielder gave no immediate sign that he was hurt. ‘He was a rare plucked one and never winced,’ as W.G. put it. But next over, out in the deep field when he thought nobody was looking, he began rubbing his ankle and so bad was the injury that he hardly appeared next day. ‘I think it cured Iddison of placing a man so near when bowling lobs,’ commented W.G. laconically.

  Only two days later W.G. saw that cricket injuries could be much more serious. He travelled back to London to appear for MCC against Nottinghamshire, and once again proved to be the one MCC batsman who could cope with the dreadful Lord’s pitch, scoring an unbeaten 117 of a total of 183. The only other batsman to equal his mastery was his great rival, Richard Daft, who made exactly the same score for Notts. But the incident for which the match would always be remembered came early in the Notts second innings. George Summers, a young Nottinghamshire professional and a promising batsman, was at the wicket when the MCC fast bowler, Platts of Derbyshire, came on. His first ball reared up and struck Summers on the cheek. Summers collapsed and W.G. swiftly went to his aid, feeling his pulse and pronouncing: ‘He is not dead.’

  Summers was carried off, still unconscious, but appeared to have made a good recovery. MCC’s wicketkeeper George Burton thought that the ball might have struck something on the pitch, perhaps a stone, ‘for it came up with exceptional quickness. Summers was naturally standing sideways and received the ball on the thinnest part of the skull.’ The next day was a hot one and although Summers was not well enough to play, he sat in the sun watching the match. Then he took the train back to Nottingham, where he died shortly afterwards. Grace was convinced that the combination of sun and a bumpy train ride aggravated Summers’s concussion with fatal consequences. So alarmed was Richard Daft by the state of the Lord’s pitch that, when the next man in after Summers was carried off, he walked out to the middle with two towels wrapped round his head, possibly the first recorded example of a helmet. Daft was more than a century ahead of his time.

  An example of Grace’s superiority over his fellows, especially on a bad wicket, came in a match for a Worcestershire XXII (county qualifications were pretty lax in those days) against a United North of England XI. Grace made 74 out of 114, and his last nine partners failed to contrive a single run between them. Worcs won by thirteen wickets!

  Grace just could not stop scoring that summer. In sixty-seven innings in all cricket he totalled 3,255 at an average of 48; thirty-three of them were in first-class matches in which he made 1,808. Oddly enough, his average was six runs per innings higher, at 54. He also took 50 wickets at 15.70 each. One admirer was moved to write a poem in praise of the champion, apparently addressed to a future cricket ‘widow’:

  The turf is as verdant as spring, love,

  The air is seductively calm;

  Why echoes the jubilant ring, love,

  With rattle of palm upon palm?

  The lovers of ‘glorious cricket’

  Stint not their exuberant glee,

  When quietly walks to the wicket

  Great W.G.

  Who is he? Ah! sure, not to know, love,

  Must argue yourself as unknown.

  When fielders are sulky and slow, love,

  When bowlers are beaten and blown,

  When Lord’s is alive with applause, love,

  When the telegraph figures are three,

  Then ask anybody the cause, love –

  Tis W.G.

  Who smiles at all Southerton’s striving,

  And Wootton’s most murderous shots?

  Who glories in cutting and driving

  The bowling of Yorkshire and Notts?

  Who stands to the hot ones unshrinking?

  Who hits with the powder of three?

  And in general goes it like winking?

  But W.G.

  We’ll wish him a cricketer’s luck, love,

  In life, a long innings and stout;

  By Fate never bowled for a duck, love,

  Or by time prematurely run out.

  May he muff none of Fortune’s best catches

  And – eh? that’s your sex to a T –

  May he win in the sweetest of matches,

  Our W.G.

  The season of 1871 saw W.G. again at his superlative best. Statistically it was his greatest summer with the bat: 2,739 first-class runs with ten centuries (two of them double hundreds) and the extraordinary average of 78. In all matches he made 3,696 runs. But it was the manner of scoring that demonstrated how he was now effortlessly head and shoulders above everyone else playing the game. The second man in the first-class table averaged 44 fewer runs per innings – and that was Fred Grace.

  W.G. described how he felt at the crease: ‘Nearly all nervous feeling at the commencement of an innings had left me; but I guarded against over-confidence and invariably played the first over or two carefully until I got my eye in. Grounds had improved wonderfully everywhere and I aimed at placing every ball, however straight and good the length of it; for that was about the only way to score at all rapidly against the crack bowlers of the day …’

  The cracks didn’t get much of a look-in against W.G., with the exception of Jemmy Shaw, who twice dismissed him for a first-over duck. On both occasions W.G. took his revenge at the first available opportunity: in the second innings.

  The first game in which this happened was the South v the North on 31 July-2 August, a benefit for H.H. Stephenson, the former Surrey captain. W.G. was dismissed by the first ball of the South’s innings, when Shaw’s appeal for lbw was upheld by the umpire, John Lillywhite.

  W.G. was not happy with the verdict, claiming he had hit the ball before it struck his pad, and Fred, standing at the non-striker’s end, agreed. W.G.’s obvious dissent caused something of a sensation in the sporting press. The Sporting Gazette backed Lillywhite and remarked sternly: ‘The decisions of the umpire must not be subjected to a test more or less rigorous, according to the celebrity of the player who happens to be subject himself thereto. A batsman is out or not, whether he be Mr W.G. Grace or the tenth man in the All Muggleton team.’ The writer went on to wonder that Grace was not dismissed leg before wicket more often because of ‘the peculiarity of his pose’ while waiting for the bowler to deliver and ‘were his eye to fail him’ he would be highly vulnerable. But he had to admit: ‘Only his eye so very seldom does fail, or his bat either.’

  Both were back in working order by the time Grace marched
out for his second knock in the late afternoon of the second day, the South holding a first-innings lead of 16. W.G. produced probably the finest display of sustained batting yet seen, to make the highest individual score in a first-class match since William Ward’s 278 at Lord’s in 1820. So determined was he not to gather a ‘pair’ that he laboured for six overs before getting off the mark. He made up for his slow start with a tremendous display of hitting and by the end of the day had scored 142 out of 195–2, paying as he put it ‘special attention to J.C. Shaw’. At the close of play Grace had to race back to the pavilion to avoid the spectators who rushed to congratulate him.

  A large crowd gathered for the final day, looking forward to a good finish, and their champion did not let them down. He had made 11 more runs when he offered a chance to the wicket-keeper but it was the only blemish in the entire innings. He scored a further century before lunch, at which he stood 246 not out and when finally caught behind off his gloves had made 268 at nearly a run a minute out of 377–4. ‘Of his play nothing can possibly be written that can savour of exaggeration, as the cricket he displayed was throughout superb, and his batting faultless,’ commented the Sportsman. It was ‘one of the most marvellous exhibitions of batting that have ever been seen against a combination of seven bowlers, comprising most of the very best bowling of the year … His hitting was as well timed as ever and his placing irreproachable.’

  Stephenson, the beneficiary, gave him a gold ring as a memento of his performance. Stephenson was naturally delighted: the great man’s performance had brought in thousands more than he might otherwise have expected to swell the gate receipts and the collection. W.G. always did his best to play in benefit matches and was disappointed if he did not perform at his best in them: he had a massive sense of responsibility to his fellow players’ welfare.