by Low, Robert
Thus there was keen expectation that John Lillywhite’s benefit match in August would be the occasion for another W.G. spectacular. It was an extra Gentlemen v Players game at the old Hove Ground and a good crowd turned out in beautiful weather only to see Grace’s off stump knocked out first ball by Jemmy Shaw again. Seventeen years later, Grace recalled the occasion clearly as one that taught him a valuable lesson – that a cricketer should always allow plenty of time to acclimatise himself to the state of the weather and ground. He arrived at the ground just before he was due to bat, and faced Shaw bowling from the sea end.
There was a glare on the water, delighting the artistic eye I have no doubt, but to me shifting and dancing like a will o’ the wisp … I was all abroad to his first ball and knew it had beaten me before it came within two yards of me … The dazzling light, the railway journey, and want of five minutes’ practice did it.
It was a lesson he took to heart. He apologised profusely to Lillywhite, who replied, ‘Better luck next time.’ For some reason, Grace related, he did not feel confident he would repeat his feats of The Oval. But Lillywhite did: he gave Grace two sovereigns (two pounds) and said he would take sixpence back for every run Grace scored in the second innings. It was a subtly calculated challenge. (For the decimal generation it should be explained that with 240 pennies to the sovereign, Grace would need to score 80 before Lillywhite was in profit.) It certainly helped to dispel Grace’s uncertainty about his prospects.
Opening the innings next day he lost his partner with the score at 35 and was joined by his brother Fred. They put on 240 together before Fred was out for 98, described by one observer as ‘a grand and faultless exhibition of superfine cricket from first to last, his play being remarkable for some of the cleanest hitting of the season’. W.G. was still there at the end of the day on exactly 200 not out, having been dropped by Daft off a skyer when he was on only 21, to the relief of the thirteen thousand spectators crowded into the ground. When Grace got back to the pavilion, Lillywhite said: ‘I’ll trouble you for five pounds on account.’
W.G. himself provided two contradictory accounts of what happened next. In his book, Cricket, published in 1891, he claimed to have replied: ‘All right Lillywhite, here it is, but if you do not let me off for the rest of the bet, I shall knock down my wicket first over tomorrow!’ Lillywhite then agreed to call it quits, he claimed.
But in the massive Memorial Biography, published in 1919, W.G. is quoted verbatim as giving a rather different version, though no source is provided:
At the end of the day’s play I had scored two hundred and had completely forgotten my compact with John. On my arrival at the pavilion he quietly came up to me and said: ‘I will thank you for £5 on account.’ I handed over the fiver with rather a woebegone air I suppose, for with a merry twinkle in his eye, he said: ‘I’m quite content to cry quits on the bargain as far as it has gone if you are.’ I was, I don’t mind confessing, as I was in rare batting fettle and the wicket was like a billiard table. After all, I should have only had to give him 8s 6d more, as I only got 17 runs the next day.
No mention there of knocking his wicket over if the bet wasn’t called off, which makes one wonder at the veracity of some of Grace’s other stories about himself. There is no dispute however that he scored 217 runs although so great were people’s expectations of Grace by now that even a double century was not enough: it had to be a good one. The Sporting Gazette commented: ‘It was not a great performance. Indeed for fine batting the younger Mr Grace’s display was greatly superior. Only the latter portion of the 217 was quite worthy of Mr W.G. Grace …’ He also took seven wickets in the match. At its end he was presented with a bat bearing an inscribed gold plate, on behalf of the Surrey club in recognition of his 268 at The Oval. His speech in reply was brevity itself: ‘Thank you,’ he said, for he was not fond of public speaking. He and Fred also received bats from Sussex.
Yet W.G.’s two double centuries were merely the icing on the cake. Wherever he played that summer and whatever the state of the wicket, the runs flowed and there were other competitors for the title of Grace’s Greatest Innings. For another big benefit, that of Ned Willsher, the rarely played fixture of Single v Married was staged at Lords’s in mid-July for the first time since 1858. W.G. carried his bat for 189 out of 310 against a strong attack and on a wicket made even more difficult than usual by rain.
Once more he took a long look at the bowling, taking a quarter of an hour to score his first run, but after that he was simply devastating. He himself rated it as one of his best and so did other observers. The Sporting Gazette called it
… the best display he has made during the present “aquatic” season. Two days sun and wind had sharpened up the wickets and he was himself again, at home to every sort of attack – master of every kind of bowling … He is not the prettiest bat living, but he is the most marvellous. When he is at his best he rises superior to the laws which govern ordinary cricketers, and hence, perhaps, much of the wonder which his defiant manipulation of the ball rouses in the mind of the average spectator.
The figures tell much of the story: the next highest scorer was Fred Grace with 33, while the married men contributed 159 and 78 between them. The Sporting Gazette’s commentator quoted a remark by John Lillywhite that aptly summarised Grace’s power: ‘There! Did you see that? I could never score off such a ball. I was content to stop it. Gone for three.’
Others regarded Grace’s performance for the South v North at Lord’s over Whit weekend as the equal or better. Sir John Lubbock’s Bill granting the populace a day’s holiday on Whit Monday had just been passed and cricket lovers took full advantage of their new day off to converge on Lord’s. ‘Such a crowd as which was attracted to Lord’s on Whit Monday has, perhaps, never been seen on the old ground since its establishment,’ wrote the Sporting Gazette. ‘It rolled up and formed itself into a ring long before the game commenced.’ When the lunch bells rang, the crowd, estimated at eight thousand, made a dash for the one exit gate that was open and such was the crush that no one could get in or out. (How interesting to note that the Lord’s authorities’ curmudgeonly treatment of its paying customers has such deep roots.) If any of the crowd were still disgruntled at missing their lunch, W.G. restored their spirits with a magnificent 178 not out, much of it in partnership (yet again) with Fred, who scored 83, ‘showing good sound steady batting, as well as an amount of patience for which few had credited him’, as the Sportsman’s correspondent wrote. W.G. was ‘irreproachable … both his timing and placing were more remarkable than usual, his manner of scoring off leg-balls that would, we venture to say, have disposed of any less accomplished batsman, being marvellous’.
The centuries came all season: 181 for MCC v Surrey at Lord’s (when turnstiles were in use for the first time and Grace’s highest score on the ground thus far); 146 in the return fixture at The Oval; 118 for Gentlemen of the South v Gentlemen of the North on the Middlesex County Ground at West Brompton; 162 (out of 255) for Gentlemen of England v Cambridge University on his first appearance at Fenner’s; 117 for MCC v Kent at Canterbury; and he was run out two short of his century, also for MCC, against Yorkshire at Lord’s.
Whenever W.G. ventured out of Bristol or London the anticipation was intense. Everyone wanted to see the champion, and the publicity for a match in which he was playing was entirely centred on him. Huge posters featuring his name were plastered all over walls and hordings. ‘His coming is heralded by local journals with as much gravity and “circumstance” as would be used in notifying the coming of Marimon herself,’ sniffily commented one metropolitan scribe.
On his first appearance at Trent Bridge, for Gloucestershire, in August, he pulled in a crowd of ten thousand on the first day and made a dogged 79 in the first innings (out of 140). His great adversary Richard Daft remarked to him afterwards that he ought to have gone on to make a century as it would have been the first in a first-class match on the Nottingham ground. ‘Why didn’t you tell m
e before and I would have done it,’ replied Grace with a laugh and promised to rectify matters in the second innings. In customary fashion he was as good as his word next day, scoring 116 before an even bigger crowd, estimated at twelve thousand. There was little work done in the local factories for those three days, the men decamping in droves to Trent Bridge to see the almost mythical W.G. bat. ‘It was chiefly the prospect of beholding the great batsman perform which drew together these enormous crowds and therefore swelled the exchequer of the county club in such a wholesome manner,’ said the Sporting Gazette. The men surely returned to work well satisfied, for they had witnessed both Grace in his pomp and the powerful Nottinghamshire team win with ease.
There were plenty of sparkling Grace vignettes too: 59 out of 83 in forty minutes against Sussex at Lord’s; a powerful 78 in an opening partnership of 134 with E.M. in the first Gloucs–Notts match, played at Clifton College, Bristol; 81 not out in a total of 141 against Kent at Maidstone and 42 not out in the second innings. In this match he bowled through both innings and took ten wickets. There was little danger of his being taken off as it was his own scratch XI, in a hastily-arranged second benefit for Willsher, the first having been disrupted by rain. Thus in Willsher’s benefit matches he had scored 312 runs without being out. His enthusiasm for the game was always intense.
When a game at Lord’s finished early he went off to Harrow to watch a school match, only to witness a tragedy. The star of the Harrow School first XI was taking his turn as square-leg umpire when he was hit behind the ear by a pull-shot. Grace rushed to his aid but to no avail: the boy was dead.
Grace’s bowling through the summer of 1871 should not be entirely overshadowed by his extraordinary feats with the bat. He took seventy-nine first-class wickets at an average of 17 but in the opinion of the Sporting Gazette, ‘Mr W.G. Grace would not earn his salt as a bowler.’ He was good enough, however, to deal with lesser mortals, as he showed when playing for the United South of England v a local XXII at Uppingham in July, a sort of missionary expedition to take the game to a region which saw little top-class cricket. Most of the spectators hoped to see W.G. in form with the bat but were sadly disappointed: he was out for a single in the first innings and run out for a duck in the second. Perhaps eager to compensate the crowd, he took twenty-five wickets (fourteen in the first innings, eleven in the second) and five catches at point.
W.G.’s enormous fame aroused such expectation among spectators that there was enormous pressure both on him to succeed and on the umpires to allow him to. An example of this came during the Canterbury Festival in August when he appeared for South v North. He made 31 in the first innings (having been prevented from opening the innings by a late train), a trifling amount by his standards, leaving him keen to do better in the second. He was in such good form that he swiftly got to 40 and, according to one observer, ‘seemed fairly set for three or four hundred runs, at the very least’. So when he was given run out by umpire Royston in dubious circumstances, the crowd, many of whom had attended just to see W.G., was upset and voiced their opposition vociferously. W.G. was as surprised as they were. He hesitated, queried the decision before departing, and felt aggrieved about it for the rest of his life. The Sporting Gazette had no hesitation in declaring it a mistake and went so far as to accuse Royston of being overcome by the heat or the wish for a cool drink.
Lillywhite’s Companion summed up his season: ‘The batting of him who has earned the title of the champion cricketer – and most certainly his equal has never been seen – has been the leading feature of the season. His defence has been more stubborn, his hitting more brilliant and his timing and placing of the ball more judicious and skilful than during the previous summer and it is a common occurrence to see him defy the combined efforts of the best bowlers in England for the whole of an afternoon. He is also unsurpassed in the field, not infrequently a successful bowler, and always an excellent general and tactician.’
The Sporting Gazette had a sly dig at Grace’s superiority to the rest of his county colleagues (Fred excepted): ‘It is true that Mr W.G. Grace has again witched the world with noble run getting, but then that sort of thing has become such a matter of course with Gloucestershire – we beg pardon, with Mr W.G. Grace – that the most devoted admirers of the great batman must really be pardoned if they tire of applauding.’
But W.G.’s greatest season thus far had a sad postscript. His father, Dr Henry Grace, died two days before Christmas at the age of sixty-three. His love of hunting and dedication to his profession were contributory factors. He insisted on riding out with the hounds despite suffering from a heavy cold, and then stayed up all night with a patient. The combination was fatal. Death was attributed to ‘inflammation of the lungs’: pneumonia. The Clifton Chronicle recorded:
Few better sportsmen existed, and by the members of the Beaufort and Berkeley Hunts, and by the lovers of field sports generally in the county and neighbourhood his loss will be generally lamented. Mr Grace, himself a fine cricketer, was the father, and we almost think we may add, instructor of the eminent amateurs bearing his name, who have obtained such renown as champion players in both hemispheres. In private life he was beloved for his professional kindness towards the poor, no less than for the generosity of his disposition, and the cordial and genial way in which he demeaned himself towards all with whom he came in contact.
He was buried in the church at Downend. As well as being a pillar of the local community, much loved by his patients, he had had the satisfaction of founding two cricket clubs (Mangotsfield, which became West Gloucestershire) and being the main inspiration behind a county team which was rapidly being built up into a force in the English game. But above all he had sired the most formidable family and the greatest individual yet to play the sport. His boys certainly inherited both his spirit and his total devotion to the cause in hand.
For W.G., the English season of 1872 was truncated at the beginning by bad weather, including snow and sleet in May, and at the end by his selection, along with eleven others, to tour Canada and the United States, the party departing in August. His first appearance outside the West Country was for MCC v Hertfordshire at Chorleywood on 10 May, where he began inauspiciously with a duck, but followed up with 75 in the second innings.
The bad weather meant that pitches were difficult to bat on in May and in common with most batsmen Grace found the runs hard to come by at first and he had to admit defeat from the rain. As one columnist put it:
Even Mr W.G. Grace, who cares rather less for the rain than a young sheldrake, and would bat for a week in the heaviest conceivable downpour, if he could get anyone to bowl to him – even the champion himself was early brought to admit that playing under such circumstances was impossible.
He also fell foul again of umpire Royston when appearing for MCC v Surrey at Lords, in the opening first-class match of the season in mid-May, dismissed lbw fourth ball without scoring, although he did not dissent from this decision.
The match was remarkable for the use of a tarpaulin cover to protect the pitch from the drenching rain. It failed in its appointed task but it was a pointer to the future. The wicket was eventually pitched 20 yards from the usual square and was rapidly reduced to a mudpatch. Grace was not alone in his failure: as the Sportsman put it, ‘the discomfiture of the great batsman was the forerunner of one of the most extraordinary freaks of fortune ever witnessed in a first-class match’. At one stage MCC were 0–7 and were grateful to reach 16 all out. The match, scheduled to last three days, finished within one, Surrey winning by five wickets. The Sporting Gazette commented: ‘Even the champion himself was early brought to admit that playing under such circumstances was impossible … W.G. is never himself upon a slow wicket. Nothing brings him so near to the level of an ordinary batsman as a few hours rain.’
As well as covers, there were other experiments in 1872. A match, in which Grace took part, was played at Lord’s with the wickets an inch higher and broader, there being a belief that batsme
n were having it too much their own way. Predictably, W.G. did not agree. The experiment proved inconclusive and was not repeated. Four stumps were tried out in a match in Lancashire but that too failed to find favour.
Grace still managed two centuries in May and 87 for the South v North at Prince’s but he did not really get into his stride until July when within the space of eight days he hit 306 in three innings for the Gentlemen v Players. In the first match, at Lord’s from 1 to 3 July, he made a chanceless 77 in the first innings, 47 of them in the first hour, displaying ‘some of the grandest cricket shown by the great batsman during the present season’, according to the Sportsman. He did even better in the second innings, with 112, which the Sporting Gazette described as his finest display of the season and which led to a seven-wicket win for the Gentlemen. Its writer summarised the finale of the match thus: ‘The Alfred Jingle phraseology might be fairly adopted: “Bowling beaten – punishment awful – very”.’
The return match, held at the Oval immediately afterwards in front of a crowd estimated at between six and seven thousand, followed much the same pattern. The Gentlemen demolished the Players inside two days, this time by nine wickets. Grace made 117, the highlight of which was a hit for six over long-on into the trees near the rackets court. He failed by only two to make a century before lunch. The Sporting Gazette thought it would ‘rank among his finest exploits’ but took him to task for restricting the match to two days. He had ‘again played the mischief with the gate money. Had he … been content with an average share of the runs the struggle might have been prolonged into the third day, and the coffers of the club thereby benefited.’