WG Grace

by Low, Robert

  A heavy rainstorm the evening before, which continued well into the morning of the first day, left the pitch soft and difficult to bat on, but the sun came out and play started promptly at noon as scheduled. The Victorian XVIII voted who should be captain (Conway) and batted first in front of a small crowd of only some six hundred people, which grew to three thousand later, leaving plenty of gaps in the grandstand. Victoria batted first and Grace’s main contribution on the first day was again to become embroiled in a row with an umpire. The English umpire, Humphrey, was unwell and replaced by a local man, Budd. The Victorian batsman Newing hit Lillywhite back over his head, the ball hitting the side of a running rink and rebounding into play. Budd signalled four, but Fred Grace claimed that he had stopped the ball, and only two runs had been scored. W.G. made no secret of his disgust at the umpire’s decision and ‘made use of expressions implying he considered Mr Budd impartial and unfair’. Budd promptly walked off the pitch, saying he was not standing for such behaviour. One commentator wrote: ‘Mr Grace frequently shows a disposition to assist umpires in their decisions, which is, to say the least, undesirable, and ought to be discouraged.’ Interestingly, Grace made no reference to the incident in his various volumes of memoirs.

  Australians might take a dim view of his gamesmanship but they still wanted to see him bat. The knowledge that he would be at the crease on the second day attracted a bigger crowd, some five thousand, and they were not disappointed. Grace scored a chanceless 64 before he attempted to slog Billy Midwinter, who had just come on, and was bowled. Midwinter, a talented all-rounder, also bowled Fred. He was to play a big part in Grace’s cricketing life in the years ahead, as he had been born in Gloucestershire but was taken to Australia as a small boy. He returned to England at Grace’s invitation to play for Gloucestershire as a professional, the first such from overseas in English cricket although he was qualified by birth to play for his native county. The match in Victoria was washed out by a thunderstorm with England on the verge of an easy victory.

  After the game, there was a grand farewell dinner for the Englishmen, which exposed the bitterness and division within the touring party. The cream of Australian cricket, the Grace brothers and the other three amateurs turned out – but the seven English professionals did not. When he stood up to respond to the hosts’ toast, W.G. had to admit that he did not know why. He criticised the local press for what he called their hostile coverage of the tour, and proffered a grudging apology to umpire Budd.

  If he thought he had defused the situation, he was mistaken. Next morning, the Melbourne papers were highly critical of him. ‘Does Dr Grace expect us to lie down for him and never to utter a word of criticism?’ asked one. A letter to the Argus explained the professionals’ boycott. It was from James Lillywhite, who revealed their deep resentment at receiving inferior accommodation to the amateurs throughout the tour. Interestingly, he excused his captain from any blame. ‘It has been stated that Mr W.G. Grace is the cause of this wretched second class business,’ he wrote, ‘but I am much deceived in the man if it is through him. Let the promoters send us home first class and the professionals will have at least one kindly recollection of them.’

  There was nothing of the kind for the professionals – quite the reverse. For the penultimate match of the tour they had to endure in excess the elements that had made so much of it so gruelling: a dreadful journey followed by an even worse game of cricket, if it could be so described, and all because the promoters hoped to make a quick buck. They had fixed up one game in South Australia, where cricket was less developed than in Victoria and New South Wales. The obvious place was the state capital, Adelaide, but the promoters had a better offer from the remote little copper mining town of Kadina, on the Yorke Peninsula, where there was plenty of ready money and nothing much to spend it on in the way of entertainment.

  First, there was another awful sea journey to be endured. It took seventy-four hours instead of the usual forty-eight to reach Port Adelaide on the steamer Coorong because of a violent storm, and the cricketers unanimously decided enough was enough: they were meant to make the whole journey by steamer but jumped ship and hired a coach to take them the last hundred miles, over rough roads which were still preferable to the sea. An Australian journalist accompanying the party described Kadina: ‘It is a peculiar place, suiting a peculiar people. Like many other mining townships, it begins nowhere and finished anywhere.’ Still, the town put on a good welcome for the Englishmen, a band playing as their coach drew up outside the Exchange Hotel.

  But when the visitors travelled the three miles out of town to see the pitch that had been arranged for them, they could scarcely believe their eyes. The locals had done their best to prepare it for the biggest event in their history, putting up two grandstands and enclosing the ground with a seven-feet-high wire fence and the playing area with a lower one. The problem was the ground itself. It was, said the Australian reporter, ‘beyond the efforts of men or money’, being entirely covered with gravel. ‘Providence never intended cricket to be played on the Peninsula,’ he concluded. ‘On the morning of the match a bushel of pebbles was swept up,’ recalled Grace. The England bowler Southerton remarked: ‘All over in two days and no side makes 100 runs.’ Grace replied: ‘Yes, and somebody killed.’ A wicket was chosen, almost at random, as one spot was much like another, and marked out with some difficulty as there was no tape measure to be found. The wicket was so hard it had to be watered before the stumps could be driven in.

  A crowd of around two thousand converged on the ground. A band played throughout the day, and mounted troopers in blue uniforms rode about the ground to keep order. Many of the miners were Cornishmen, and they turned out in force to see their compatriots, and to indulge in frequent fights and wrestling matches. The Kadina men won the toss and elected to bat. Although they were kitted out in new flannels and the latest equipment, it swiftly transpired that they had very little idea about how to play cricket.

  ‘It is impossible to describe the play, for the simple reason that there was no play to describe,’ wrote a baffled reporter. Several batsmen appealed enthusiastically when they were bowled or caught. ‘One man knocked his off stump kicking, nearly spoiling Bush’s beauty for ever, and then wanted to know if he was out or not. Bush said, “Slightly!” but the umpire thought not, and he remained in … It seemed astonishing that men … should be so completely in the dark in regard to even the simplest rules of the game they were trying to play.’ Grace did not share the general merriment, perhaps because when he held a difficult catch at point that too was ruled not out.

  Lunch was taken at 3 pm, with the usual volley of toasts, and immediately afterwards the XXII were all out for 42. Grace and Jupp – ‘the long and the short of it’, said the Australian reporter – opened as usual. The opening bowler Arthur alternated between roundarm and underarm, one of which Grace, on 5, spooned to short leg. The local umpire’s decisions grew increasingly eccentric, giving the bowlers up to seven balls an over (in those days there were four to the over). Grace received seven balls in one over, most of which fizzed over his head, after which he declined to face another and ‘the umpire woke up and called “over” with great dignity’. Only Jupp and Greenwood reached double figures, the latter making top score of 22 before being given out by the local umpire ‘off a ball which hit the ground twice ere it reached mid-on’s hands’. All out for 64 just before 6 p.m., the Englishmen were taken back to their hotel in their coach, ‘nearly carrying away the fence and wire gates’.

  Next day there were two bands playing on the ground, simultaneously. W.G. led the way in repainting the creases and the locals fared even worse than on the previous day, amassing the mighty total of 13, including five extras. As the Australasian’s man put it: ‘This deserves a place in “Lillywhite” and all other “Guides” or “Companions” as really a most extraordinary match, although on such a ground it can hardly be called cricket. It wasn’t good enough for skittles.’

  To keep the cro
wd – and particularly the boisterous Cornishmen – happy, the tourists agreed to play an exhibition innings, in which W.G. struck 54, ‘doing some terrific hitting, to the great delight of the “cousin Jacks”, as the Cornish miners are styled’. Two more exhibitions were mounted: a single-wicket match between the two batsmen who had top-scored against the English XI (they had tied on the mighty total of 7) for a a cup valued at 10 guineas. The bowler was W.G. and the field consisted of only two Englishmen. Despite this, the hapless locals were each dismissed twice by Grace without scoring. On his third attempt, one again made a duck but the other, whom the Englishmen found more congenial, at last managed to drive Grace back over his head for a single to claim the cup. Next day, there was yet another game, a friendly seventeen-a-side affair with the Englishmen divided among the locals and, to round off the delights of Kadina, a visit to the Wallaroo copper mine.

  That was meant to be the last of the fourteen matches the England team played in Australia. But with Grace at the helm the script was always likely to be rewritten and so it was, the consequence being a legacy of bad feeling all round. Adelaide’s cricketers were still smarting from the insult of being sidelined by the Kadina fixture. Several of them travelled to Kadina to invite Grace to play a last game in Adelaide on the way home, making him ‘a liberal offer’ to do so.

  Grace was willing to accommodate them, as it would mean an unexpected cash bonus for him and his team. The problem was that the tour promoters had given an undertaking that the tourists would play one only match in South Australia, with the idea of attracting more people to the Kadina fixture (in the event, they lost money on it). They strenuously objected to the Adelaide fixture. But Grace shrewdly saw a loophole: he had been contracted by the promoters to play fourteen matches on tour and he had fulfilled his side of the contract. After that, he argued, he was free to do as he liked. Angry telegrams flew between Grace and the promoters whose representative, travelling with the team, also chipped in with his objections. Grace first called the Adelaide game merely ‘an exhibition of skill’ but the promoters still threatened an injunction to stop it.

  Grace called their bluff and decamped from Kadina at short notice, bringing the dinner laid on by his hosts to a sudden and unexpected conclusion. He packed his players on to the coach and set off for Adelaide in the dark, with the result that the driver got lost out in the bush. Eventually they decided it would be best to stop and wait until daybreak rather than get even more lost. They finally reached Adelaide at 2 p.m. and, despite their weariness, were out on the famous Oval an hour later to face a South Australian XXII.

  About a thousand spectators watched the locals batting almost as badly as their upcountry rivals had, to total only 64. Next day, five times as many people came to see ‘the Champion’, batting at 5. He disappointed, however, lofting the ball high to long-on where he was well caught right on the rope, having made only 6. The Australasian’s reporter commented: ‘It was a moot point as to whether the catch was made over the line or not, but the umpire gave W.G. out on appeal.’ On the final day, he did even worse after walking to the wicket to great applause for his last innings on the tour. He played on for only one run and ‘retired, to the manifest disappointment of all’. The match finished with England victorious by seven wickets, and by 5 p.m. the same day the tourists were on board the SS Nubia, which left for England early the next morning, 29 March. Seven weeks later, seven months after they had left England, they landed at Southampton in the steamship Khedive, to which they had transferred en route.

  ‘Our tour had, on the whole, been conspicuously successful,’ recorded Grace, a great rewriter of history. The record was: played 15, won 10, drawn 2, lost 3. The Englishmen were still far superior to most Australian players, though standards were improving. But the Australian view was rather different. Although it was agreed that there was still a big gap between the best Australian and English players, Grace’s Twelve had been notably deficient in batting and bowling. There had been one exception: Grace himself. He had, in effect, been the difference between the two countries. ‘Leaving the captain out, a colonial eleven could have been found to play a good match, and most likely beat the rest of the (English) team,’ wrote a correspondent in the Australasian. ‘That Mr W.G. Grace himself was a wonderful player was soon discovered, and that the reports of his general skill as a cricketer, and extraordinary batting powers in particular, had not been exaggerated, was on all sides allowed.’

  But his high-handed attitude had left a sour taste in some quarters. ‘It is a thousand pities that want of tact and management on the part of the promoters and the Eleven, or rather their captain, has made them both unpopular,’ went on the anonymous writer, going on to express the hope that Grace would not lead the next tour, by which time ‘the hatchet of ill-will will no doubt have been buried’. It was to be nearly two decades before W.G. set foot in Australia again – and the hatchet of ill-will was soon disinterred.

  7 · REWRITING THE RECORDS

  1874–1877

  W.G. returned from Australia with renewed vigour. Only four days after stepping off the ship, he and Fred were back on the cricket field and warming up for the first-class season in a local derby between Thornbury and Clifton. W.G. smote 259 in three hours, including ten sixes, for Thornbury and with Fred put on 296 for the second wicket, demonstrating that the brothers were on a different plane altogether from their West Country brethren. If he did not quite equal his performances of 1871 and 1873, that only emphasised how brilliant he had been then, for 1874 was still a procession of centuries – eleven all told, the highest he ever scored in a season and eight of them in first-class games. In fact, he scored twelve centuries that year if one includes his 126 at Ballarat on the Australian tour.

  Three of them were made for Gloucestershire, who carried all before them to be undisputed unofficial county champions for the the first time in their short history. The first was 179 (out of 299) against Sussex at Brighton, the others in the two games against Yorkshire. The fixture at Sheffield in late July was regarded as the championship decider and thousands of Yorkshiremen attended to see the Grace brothers. W.G. did not disappoint them: he scored 67 before lunch on the opening day, with some fine drives on a good wicket. He went on to score exactly 100 more, well over half of Gloucestershire’s 303. Then he destroyed Yorkshire with the ball, taking 4–60 in their first innings (including six successive maidens and twelve maidens out of thirteen), followed by 7–44 in the second to win the match. ‘The northerners could not stand against him,’ was the Sporting Gazette’s verdict.

  In the return match at Clifton in mid-August, the atmosphere was rather different: some two or three thousand spectators (reckoned to be a good turn-out in inclement weather), including many ladies for whom the cricket week at Clifton was a great social occasion, taking their place in a grandstand especially erected in front of the college terrace. The result, though, was the same: this time W.G. scored 127 and the other Grace brothers weighed in too. W.G. put on 137 with E.M., who made 51, the champion eventually falling to a slip catch by Ulyett. W.G. took 5–44 and 5–77, G.F. 4–43 and 1–43, as well as making 81 with the bat. Gloucestershire’s win was ‘entirely and wholly due to the wonderful play of the brothers Grace’, said the Sporting Gazette.

  So it was against Surrey too at Cheltenham a few days later on a wicket which no one could handle. Gloucestershire shot Surrey out for 27 in their second innings, their lowest score ever until then, W.G. taking seven wickets in each innings. He also scored 27 by himself, the highest individual innings in the match. It finished so early that a jokey scratch game was arranged between Grace’s XI and Frank Townsend’s XI, in which Grace batted with a broomstick and still contrived to score 35, a score bettered by only one other batsman.

  Another century came for a joint Kent-Gloucs XI v England at Canterbury, which replaced the South v North fixture (Gloucestershire were included purely so that Grace could play). Although his opening partner, I.D. Walker, was one of the fastest
scorers in the game, he made only 37 to W.G.’s 102 in their partnership of 149 for MCC v Kent.

  Grace finished the season with 1,664 first-class runs at an average of 52 but of greater significance was a huge improvement with the ball: he took 139 first-class wickets at 12.64 each. But of even greater significance was the birth of his first child, on 6 July, a boy to whom he gave exactly the same name as himself, and who would thereafter always be known as W.G. junior. He was to become a good enough cricketer to win his Blue for Cambridge and play for Gloucestershire, but never to be good enough to hope to match the father whose initials he bore.

  W.G. senior continued spreading the gospel of the game, taking himself to Ireland for the first time with the United South troupe and a match against a Leinster XXII in July. He did not disappoint the thousands who made the pilgrimage to see him and Fred put on 200 together, W.G. contributing 153, to the pleasure of all save an Irishman who had travelled a hundred miles and left at 5 p.m. on the first day complaining that he would like to see someone else batting too.

  There were other curiosities that summer. A team of baseball players from Boston and Philadelphia came over to try to tempt the English into adopting their game with exhibitions on various cricket grounds around the country. They did not succeed although their athleticism impressed the crowds. Curiously, they also played seven games of cricket against very inferior opposition as no one knew if they would be any good. The result was that they stayed unbeaten.

  W.G. was invited to play in a match whose greatest claim to be remembered is that it boasted probably the longest billing ever afforded to a game of cricket: ‘Gentlemen of England who had not been educated at the Universities v Gentlemen of the Universities, Past and Present’, which might have been abbreviated to Brains v Brawn. The non-graduates, including W.G. and G.F., trounced the university men by an innings. The match was never staged again.