WG Grace

by Low, Robert

  Making 110 for Gloucestershire at Clifton, he was particularly severe on the bowling of George Giffen, who had been the star turn thus far of the ill-starred tour. He nearly had a fourth century against the tourists, falling on 92 for Lord Londesborough’s XI during the Scarborough Festival in September. For the first time since 1879, he scored more first-class runs than anyone, his 1,846 pipping Read by 21.

  For a decade and a half, W.G. had played cricket alongside his cousin Walter Raleigh Gilbert, who had been a regular member of the Gloucestershire team since 1876 and toured Australia with him in 1873/74. W.R. Gilbert was a short, stocky all-rounder in the Grace mould – a fine batsman, with a first-class double century to his credit, a useful slow bowler and an excellent deep fielder. He also played a couple of seasons for Middlesex. Nothing had prepared the cricket world for what was to happen in 1886.

  At the beginning of the season, Gilbert, then thirty-two years old, announced that he was turning professional, which is perhaps evidence that he was short of money. He was due to play for Gloucestershire v Sussex at Hove in June but did not appear. For a couple of days previously, he was observed stealing money from a coat hanging in the pavilion at Cheltenham, where he played as professional for East Gloucestershire. He was sentenced to twenty-eight days’ hard labour and was then despatched to Canada, where he lived for the rest of his life. His employers, family and friends suppressed the story, and Gilbert vanished from the English scene as if he had never existed. In his various books of memoirs, W.G. made no mention of his cousin’s disgrace. That wasn’t the Victorian way of doing things.

  W.G.’s return to form was no temporary comeback: he did the same for the next three seasons and in 1887 topped 2,000 runs in a season for the first time since his annus mirabilis eleven years earlier. He missed the double by only three wickets. His 2,062 runs placed him more than 400 clear of his nearest rival, Arthur Shrewsbury, who, however, made the highest individual total of the year, 267 for Notts v Middlesex. Grace’s own highest score was 183 not out, against Yorkshire at Gloucester, to earn an unexpected draw. After 92 in the first innings, it made a total of 275 for once out in the match.

  He was in similarly unforgiving mood when Kent visited Clifton for the first time in late August. With E.M. he put on 126 for the first wicket, the older brother outscoring him to reach 70 before, as the local paper, put it, ‘Martin, attacking uphill, upset the coroner’s pegs’. W.G. went on to his century with his favourite late cut, and was stumped next ball for 101. In Gloucestershire’s second innings, he repeated the feat, reaching his century off the penultimate ball of the game, to end with 103 not out, amid scenes of high excitement. Small wonder, for it was only the third time the feat had been accomplished in the first-class game. Only Grace himself had done it in modern times and that was back in 1868 (he was to do it again in 1888). Here he was, at the age of thirty-nine, dominating the scene once again. He himself attributed his success in the match to the slow, dry wicket, which he said he preferred by now to the fast, dry wickets he had relished when younger. ‘The first day the wicket was perfect of its kind,’ he recalled, ‘every ball coming easy and with very little break, travelling quickly when hit, as the outside ground was much harder than the pitch, which had been watered.’

  It was a year of anniversaries: Queen Victoria’s jubilee and the MCC’s centenary. As if by arrangement with the gods, the summer was a long and hot one. The greatest sportsman of the Victorian age and the finest cricketer ever to sport the MCC’s colours took full advantage of the hard-baked pitches to compile a further series of big scores to commemorate both institutions. This was highly appropriate, for W.G. ruled cricket as majestically as Victoria her empire, and was just as well known and respected by the public. If anyone epitomised her reign, it surely was Grace, even though she had been on the throne eleven years before he was born.

  Two Centenary matches were held at Lord’s in June, one serious, one light-hearted. The serious one was between England and MCC, captained by W.G. ‘It is probable,’ recorded The Times, ‘that two teams never entered the field so skilful at all points’, adding that they included W.G., ‘the greatest cricketer of his, and in the opinion of most people, any other day.’ They were indeed the flower of a game coming to full bloom. The other MCC players were Hawke, Hornby, A.J. Webbe, J.G. Walker, Barnes, Gunn, Flowers, G.G. Hearne, Rawlin and Sherwin. But the England team looked even stronger: W.W. Read, Stoddart, Barlow, Bates, Briggs, Hall, Pilling, Maurice Read, Lohmann and Ulyett. Some eight thousand people crammed into Lord’s on the opening day, including a host of peers in the pavilion.

  Winning the toss, W.G. opened with Hornby but was soon dismissed for 5. All out for 175, MCC then had to endure a massive opening partnership of 266 between Arthur Shrewsbury (152) and Andrew Stoddart, whose 151 was his first century at Lord’s. The only consolation W.G. could derive was that they narrowly failed to break the first-wicket record at the ground (283) that he and B.B. Cooper had set in 1869. No wonder that when he was asked who would be the first player he would pick for any of his sides, W.G. replied, ‘Give me Arthur.’ England compiled 514, and although W.G. did a little better in the second innings than he had in the first, with 45, MCC were all out for 222, to be crushed by an innings and 117 runs.

  That evening, three hundred dined in the tennis court, and listened to a dozen speakers, including W.G. and the Liberal politician George Goschen, who the previous year had been sounded out for Prime Minister by the Queen and now brought W.G. into his after-dinner anecdotes. He spoke of ‘the bore who comes to a cricket match at Lord’s and makes remarks as to what is going on in the Commons. You know the reception he would have, and if he were to say the Ministry is out, there would be a cry of “Who is out?”’

  ‘“The Ministry.”

  ‘“Oh, I thought it was Grace.”’

  The second Centenary match was an altogether more frivolous affair between The Gentlemen of MCC and Eighteen Veterans over Forty, including some doughty old campaigners. At thirty-eight, W.G. just scraped into the MCC side and gave himself plenty of bowling, taking 5–87 off 56.3 overs. When MCC batted, the highlight of the innings was, for once, W.G.’s dismissal for 24 by a gentle delivery from the first ball of Mr E. Rutter’s second over. ‘The downfall of the great batsman at the hands of Mr Rutter caused some amusement,’ said The Times. Three days later came the culmination of the Queen’s jubilee celebrations, a service of thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey, the capital packed with her subjects keen to get a glimpse of her on the way to the Abbey. That night beacons were lit on hills the length and breadth of the kingdom.

  W.G. carried on celebrating in his own distinctive fashion. For MCC he carried his bat for 81 of his side’s 118 all out against Sussex, while against Cambridge University at Lord’s he made a whirlwind 116 not out in 135 minutes, including one magnificent hit into the pavilion. For Gloucestershire, in addition to his brace of centuries against Kent, he made two scores of 113, both of which underlined his superiority to other mortals.

  The first was against Middlesex in early June on a typically lively Lord’s wicket and was made out of a total of only 197. After a few early difficulties, W.G. settled down to play an innings described as ‘simply perfect’ and almost carried his bat before falling lbw to A.J. Webbe. The next highest score was 25. In almost identical fashion, he held out against Nottinghamshire on an equally spiteful Clifton pitch while an almost unplayable Billy Barnes ran through the rest of the batting to dismiss Gloucestershire for 186. When the last man came in Grace was on only 82 and, wrote his biographer Methven Brownlee, ‘there was a bet of a bottle of Giesler to a Jubilee shilling that he did not get his century’. As a rule, it was a mistake to bet against W.G.

  He demonstrated his huge and continuing zest for the game during the Scarborough Festival when, playing for Gentlemen of England v I Zingari, he smashed a vigorous 73 and followed it by taking over the wicket-keeper’s gloves and making a smart stumping off a Nepean leg-break. (This encounter has
a unique place in cricket history as the only first-class match in which Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince Christian Victor, played. Then aged twenty, a former captain of Wellington College and a useful ’keeper and bat, he made 35 for I Zingari. He went on to join the army and died in South Africa during the Boer War.)

  The next year, 1888, the Australians were back, led by Percy McDonnell, and like their predecessors kept running into Grace at the top of his form. The tourists’ batting was weak but their bowling exceeded expectations, entirely through the efforts of two men, the right-arm medium-pacer Charlie Turner – ‘The Terror’ – and J.J. Ferris, a nippy left-arm seamer, both playing in England for the first time. They took an astonishing 534 wickets between them (Turner 314, Ferris 220), frequently bowling unchanged through an innings. Grace had a high regard for both of them – so much so that he hired Ferris to play for Gloucestershire in 1892 – although he dealt with them briskly enough on the field of play.

  Three years later, in the book Cricket, which bore his name but was largely written for him by Methven Brownlee, Grace recalled: ‘How those two slaved and toiled from the beginning to the end of the tour, and with what remarkable effect, is still fresh in the memories of most of us.’ But Grace considered Spofforth far superior to Turner because he could choose the amount a ball would cut or swing – a few inches or a foot and a half. Turner moved the ball off the seam in prodigious fashion but never managed to produce the tiny deviations which Grace considered the most dangerous to the batsman. In effect, he swung it too much and too predictably.

  They encountered Grace at his most formidable in the match against the Gentlemen of England at Lord’s at the end of May, when after the tourists had made 179 he and the Surrey captain John Shuter enjoyed a thrilling partnership of 158, though it is doubtful whether the Australians did. They scored at the rate of 75 an hour and Shuter’s share was 71. After Grace had completed his century (remember, this was still the first day), he ‘meted out terrible punishment’ and went on to make 165, one of the many candidates for his finest innings ever.

  In Gloucestershire’s two games against the tourists at Clifton and Cheltenham he scored 51 and 92 respectively, the latter the only score over 50 in the match. In the three Test matches he never quite came off with the bat. The first was another spectacular Lord’s disaster on a wet wicket which the Australians coped with rather better than the home batsmen. The visitors batted first and W.G. was soon in action at point, snaffling a firm cut by Bannerman off Lohmann and gleefully hurling it over his head backwards all the way to third man, proof that Victorian cricketers could be as effusive in their celebrations as their late twentieth-century counterparts. Australia made 116, which proved to be the highest total of the match. W.G. struggled, along with all the English batsmen – ‘Dr Grace … by no means seemed at home with the bowling’ said The Times – and was finally out for 10 on the second morning. The match was wrapped up on that second day, with deplorable batting all round on a difficult pitch. England were all out for 53, their lowest total to date in a Test, Australia replied with 60, setting England 124 to win. They managed just 62. W.G. top-scored with 24, from which The Times drew some slight consolation:

  In glancing at the feeble batting of the home team, it should be noted that Dr W.G. Grace, although falling short of the great things always expected from him, obtained more runs than any other two batsmen of the Eleven.

  With England one down in the three-match series, things looked bleak. But Stoddart, who had been appointed captain for the first match, was unavailable for the vital second Test at The Oval. With defeat in the rubber looming, England at last turned to their greatest player to lead them, a few days after his fortieth birthday. He was to go on to lead his country in four out of the next five series, always against Australia as there was still no other country nearly strong enough to challenge either of them. Why did it take so long? England and Australia had played twenty-eight Tests against each other before the greatest player on either side was invited to become captain. One of the reasons was that nineteen of those games had been played in Australia during tours for which W.G. had been unavailable. But it still meant that, in those games for which he might have been considered, he was overlooked.

  England’s captains in those matches were Lord Harris, ‘Monkey’ Hornby, A.G. Steel and Andrew Stoddart – the most outstanding amateurs of their day, with one obvious exception. More to the point, they were the most upstanding, and there is a slight suspicion that cricket’s top brass did not initially regard W.G. as quite up to the job socially. But there were were plenty of others who thought he wasn’t quite up to it tactically. He tended to let things drift, allowing bowlers to wheel away unchanged for hours even when they were being flogged all over the ground – and there is no doubt that he over-bowled himself to a ludicrous degree. Still, he always led from the front.

  His debut as captain was inauspicious – he lost the toss, but after that things improved. Australia were shot out for only 80. W.G. failed with the bat, caught at slip for 1 off the last ball of Turner’s second over, but thanks to a sparkling unbeaten 62 by George Lohmann, batting at ten, England made 317 and were in control. The Australians feared their batting was not up to the standard of previous years and they were proved right: they were dismissed for 100 and the match was over within two days.

  The series squared, England travelled to Manchester with renewed confidence. W.G. won the toss but when England lost two quick wickets for only six runs, crisis loomed but

  Dr Grace and Mr Read by brilliant hitting soon put a different complexion on the game. To have seen the former batting one might have imagined that the wicket was perfectly true, with such ease did he play the bowling.

  W.G. was brilliantly caught at long-on one-handed by Bonnor for 38, not a huge score by any standards but, as it transpired, the highest of the match and the innings that seized an initiative England were never to lose. They made 172, dismissed Australia twice in a day for 81 and 70 and won by an innings and 21 to take the series 2–1. Their new captain didn’t even have time to overbowl himself, though he did take three catches in Australia’s second innings, including a brilliant effort, running in from mid-off and scooping the ball close to the ground to get rid of Edwards. As the last Australian wicket fell, the crowd poured over the ropes and on to the ground, massing in front of the pavilion and refusing to leave until Peel, who took eleven wickets in the match, and W.G. appeared at a window to acknowledge their cheers. W.G. could not have started his long stint as captain of England any better.

  His last match of the season against the Australians was for an England XI at Hastings, where he made an attractive 53 out of 66, though the star of the show was Turner, who took 17–50 in the match, fourteen clean bowled and two lbw. There was an amusing moment in another tour match, against C.I. Thornton’s XI at Norbury, south London, when W.G., after being given out lbw to Turner to his great displeasure, was sitting among the crowd. Thornton himself drove a ball straight and high over the boundary, upon which Grace rose from his seat to catch the ball, to great amusement all round.

  In 1888, Grace reached the age of forty, although he appeared older, looking by now as if he had stepped straight out of the pages of the Old Testament. His individual masterpiece that summer was his 215 for Gloucestershire against Sussex at Brighton in May, the eighth double century of his career and his first for three years. He opened the batting on the first day, by the end of which he was unbeaten on 188, out of 361–6. Sussex tried nine bowlers against him without success. Next day he completed his double century before falling to Humphreys. ‘He had been in nearly seven hours,’ reported The Times, ‘and there was no falling-off from the masterly batting for which he is so famous, while he exhibited quite his old self in placing the ball.’ He made only 5 in the second innings and Sussex contrived to save a game in which 1,117 runs were scored in three days.

  But W.G.’s most remarkable achievement was that for the second successive season he made cent
uries in each innings of a match, this time against Yorkshire at Clifton. In the first innings he made 148 out of 221 while he was at the wicket, in the second 153 out of 253 to salvage an improbable draw (the most any of his team-mates managed in either innings was 47). It was the third and last time W.G. performed this feat – and remember that, at that point, he was the only batsman in the history of the game to have done it at all, never mind three times, which is one of the most telling testaments to his batting supremacy. Even the Yorkshiremen joined in the cheering when he departed the second time, each innings being chanceless. He ended the season with more first-class runs than anyone else – 1,886 at 32.51 – and the respectable haul of 93 wickets at 18.18 each, although the top wicket-taker was George Lohmann with 209 at 10.19.

  In December 1888 W.G. attended the first meeting of the County Cricket Council in the pavilion at Lord’s as Gloucestershire’s representative. The council had been set up at a meeting at Lord’s in July 1887 (when Grace could not be present because he was playing for the Gentlemen v Players) to regulate the affairs of the growing number of counties, leaving the rule-making to MCC, although many counties felt this was an area in which they too should have a voice.

  The last item on the agenda was the vexed problem of exactly when a first-class match should end on the third day. One suggestion was that it should be at the discretion of the umpires if a close finish was in prospect. Grace spoke up to agree with his old friend Lord Harris, the chairman, who thought it better to start earlier in the morning. Grace proposed that matches should start at midday on the first day, and 11 a.m. on the two subsequent days although, Wisden reported, ‘he was afraid Gloucestershire were very slack in that matter at home’.