by Low, Robert
As the 1880s came to an end Grace continued to be the most prolific scorer in the game, ending the decade in much better shape (except physically) than he had started it. In 1889 he made 1,396 runs at 32.46 with three first-class centuries, 154 for South v North and the other two in Gloucestershire’s matches against Middlesex, at Lord’s and Cheltenham plus a rapid 94 (out of 126) in the first innings against Surrey at The Oval. This match was noteworthy as the first to feature a declaration on the third day, a measure introduced that season to help facilitate results (along with the five-ball over, increased from four).
Back in October 1884, the Gloucestershire committee had embarked on a search for a ground of their own, appointing a sub-committee for the purpose which included W.G. They soon found a suitable area of land on Ashley Down, Bristol, but it was not until 1888 that the purchase of twenty-five acres, of which twelve to thirteen acres would be for the sole use of the cricket club, was approved by the club’s annual general meeting. W.G. was appointed a director of the company that was to run the ground, and he played a big role in getting the ground in shape for the first season of cricket there in 1889. He visited it almost every day, probably driving the groundsman, John Spry, to distraction with his interventions (he had originally promised the job to Tom Gregg, coach at Clifton College, but was overruled by the committee). The first match at Ashley Down was on 22 and 23 April 1889, between a Gloucestershire XI and a Colts XXII. The inaugural first-class match was Gloucestershire v Warwickshire on 23–5 May, which the home team won by 63 runs. The county is playing there still.
In common with most new venues, the wicket took some time to settle. When the county played Sussex, W.G. was the only batsman with the technique and determination to cope with it. His 84 (more than twice as many as anyone else on either side in either innings) may have been his best innings of the summer. But 1889 marked the beginning of his decline as a consistently effective bowler. He took only forty-four first-class wickets, less than half his haul of the previous summer and his lowest total for twenty-one years. He could still winkle good batsmen out but his increasing weight and girth made him a less athletic and therefore menacing figure. In the decade ahead, his last full one at the highest level, he would never take more than sixty-one wickets in a season while the top performers raked in figures in the high two hundreds. But he was by no means finished with the bat.
Gloucestershire were in the doldrums in this period, partly because their bowling was well below the required strength, despite the efforts of William Woof, a left-arm medium-pacer who bore the brunt of the attack with W.G. in the 1880s, taking 644 wickets for the county between 1878 and 1902. They were greatly helped towards the end of the decade by another left-arm seamer, Fred Roberts, who made his debut in 1887 and toiled away until 1905, taking 963 wickets.
In 1889, the MCC commissioned a portrait of W.G. by Archibald Stuart Wortley at a cost of £300, a huge sum in those days. The money was raised by private subscriptions from members, limited to £1 each, and the portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy. It now hangs in the MCC Museum at Lord’s.
There was another, graver matter hanging over W.G.’s head. When he arrived at Ashley Down one morning after rain, he decided that the ground was too wet to play on and forbade practice until further notice. When the weather had improved and the ground had dried out somewhat, a group of young players arrived and, ignoring the notice ‘No Practice Today’ posted on the front gate, went in and started a practice session. Unfortunately for them, W.G. returned to the ground and was furious to see that his instructions had been ignored. He became involved in an argument with the group, one of whom must have said something cheeky or insulting. W.G. lost his temper, pulled a stump out of the ground and attacked the young man with it. From a letter which W.G. wrote on 26 May 1889 to J.W. Arrowsmith, a printer/publisher and president of the Gloucestershire committee, it appeared that the young man’s father, a member of the county club was demanding compensation:
Many thanks for saying you would see White’s father about the assault if I wished it. As I did not see him last evening when I saw the son, perhaps it would be as well, if not troubling you too much. The lad I know bears no ill will, but I fancy, he was kept in bed to make it look worse, you will find this out if you call. I told the boys [sic] father and mother that I was sorry I had struck the boy, but that 9 out of 10 persons would have done the same, under the provocation. I could do no more than apologise etc, which I did, and of course would pay the lad for loss of time etc. But I shall certainly not stand Black Mail being levied on me, which I fancy the father has been put up to, by some of his friends.
The father, I think you could reason with, and would after some persuasion forego proceedings which would save a lot of trouble and annoyance if it could be managed. You must not let him know, that I know you are going to see him as it may make matters worse but if you call as president of the club he belongs to, you see the son as well as the father and let me know the result. Please drop me a line at Lord’s Cricket Ground, St John’s Wood Road, and I shall then know how to act …
It would appear that Arrowsmith’s mediation was successful, and the boy accepted an apology from W.G. It would certainly have been highly embarrassing for him if the affair had become public. A charge of assault could have been very awkward for a well-known city doctor, though it would have been a brave magistrate or jury who convicted W.G. of anything other than constantly wanting his own way on the cricket field.
13 · CAPTIOUS CAPTAIN RETURNS TO AUSTRALIA
1890–1892
A RELATIVELY quiet couple of seasons at the beginning of the 1890s were the prelude to W.G.’s second tour of Australia in 1891/92, eighteen years after his first. In 1890 he scored only one first-class century but still accumulated 1,476 runs, the third-highest total behind Shrewsbury and Gunn. His appetite for the game was undiminished: he completed 52 innings, and only Ulyett, with 53, went to the crease more often. Even that was not enough for Grace. C.C. Clarke recorded: ‘W.G. would go anywhere to play a match if he had a spare day. Several times a telegram, on Friday evening brought him for my side on a Saturday.’ The sole century came for Gloucestershire against Kent at Maidstone when he carried his bat for 109 out of 231. He just missed out on another against Yorkshire at Dewsbury, with a sparkling 98, and posted scores of 94 and 90 in his county’s games against Lancashire at Old Trafford and Clifton.
The Australians were back in England, again with the relentlessly effective bowling duo of Turner and Ferris, who by extraordinary symmetry each took 215 wickets on the tour, and were now backed up by the young Hugh Trumble, on the first of his five visits to England, but their batting let them down and they lost two of the three Tests. The third, at Manchester, was abandoned because of rain without a ball being bowled.
Grace had mixed fortunes in the two matches that did finish: in the first innings of the Lord’s Test he was caught and bowled for a duck by Turner but in the second made a superb unbeaten 75 to steer England to a seven-wicket victory. In the second Test, at The Oval, he just escaped a king pair. Caught by Trumble at slip off the first ball of the first innings, in the second innings he was dropped at point by Trott off Trumble’s first ball and was soon out for 16. England managed to win by two wickets. Grace’s bowling recovered from the low point of 1889, and he took 61 wickets. But he was handicapped by a knee injury, which flared up again the following season and was a factor in his lowest first-class aggregate for twenty-three years, 771 against 588 back in 1868.
There was, however, no real comparison between the two eras. In 1868 he had made his runs in only nine first-class innings at an average of 65.33. By 1891 the game had developed to such an extent that Grace completed 40 first-class innings, with a top score of 72 not out, and an average of only 19.76. All in all, it was not the best preamble to a demanding tour of Australia for a man of 43. But, as so often in the past, Grace had some surprises up his ample sleeve for the critics and the sceptics.
The Engl
and tour of Australia in 1891/92 was organised and financed by the third Earl of Sheffield (1831-1909), one of the great benefactors of cricket (and many other good causes). He had created his own ground on his 5,000-acre estate at Sheffield Park, Sussex, where, starting in 1884, the Australians often opened their tours, rather as contemporary tourists do at the Duke of Norfolk’s Arundel ground.
In 1887/88 two English sides had toured Australia at the same time, losing the promoters huge amounts of money (the Melbourne Cricket Club alone lost £3,000). No wonder Lord Hawke commented: ‘There was never such a prominent case of folly.’ There was understandable reluctance in Australian cricketing circles about bringing the Englishmen over again, but there was concern that public interest in the game in Australia was waning: it had started to grow in the 1870s and increased as the standard of cricket improved. But the wave of great cricketers who had come to full maturity in the early 1880s had passed their peak. Most had retired or were in decline and they had not been replaced by others of similar stature.
The possibility of a new English tour was first raised in discussions between Sheffield and Harry Boyle, the great fast bowler who was player/manager of the 1890 Australian touring side, towards the end of the tour. After Boyle went back to Australia, they stayed in touch on the subject. Boyle consulted with cricketing bodies and wrote to Sheffield to assure him an English side would be welcome, but the proviso was, the party had to include W.G. Grace. Nearly two decades had passed since he had first toured Australia when in his prime in 1873/74, but in all that time no cricketer had emerged in England or Australia with anything like the same ability or charisma. He was still far and away the biggest attraction in cricket.
Lord Sheffield was as keen on promoting cricket in Australia as he was in Sussex, and put up £150 for an inter-state competition, the Sheffield Shield, which commemorates his munificence to this day. He was even more generous in his attitude to the tour. He agreed to make up any losses, which in the event came to about £2,000. The tour was estimated to have cost £16,000, against receipts of £14,000, despite the tourists’ getting the lion’s share of the gate money. For instance, nearly forty thousand people were estimated to have watched the third game of the tour, against New South Wales at Sydney, paying some £1,800. Of this, £1,400 went to the Englishmen.
The 1891/92 tour deficit was more than accounted for by Grace’s fee and expenses, which came to £3,000, double the fee he had demanded and got for his first tour. It was no wonder that seasoned old professionals should again raise the question of who was the amateur and who the professional, but there was little public grumbling, which gave W.G. carte blanche to demand what he liked. So Lord Sheffield’s team, and especially W.G., had an important task to fulfil in reviving interest.
Even so, Grace was in two minds for a while about going on the tour, principally because of his fear that his injured knee would not stand up to it. But when his biographer W. Methven Brownlee quizzed him about this, his reply, quoted by Brownlee in the magazine the Cricket Field, was: ‘The voyage and rest will put it right. I am anxious to go again, for I believe it will do the game good. A bad wicket is a rare exception there, and I feel as fit as ever.’ An added bonus was that Sheffield had agreed to let Grace take his wife and two youngest children, Bessie, aged thirteen, and Charles, aged nine. It goes without saying that no one else was so favoured.
The manager of the tour was Alfred Shaw, who had retired from Nottinghamshire and was now employed by Lord Sheffield to organise matches at Sheffield Park. The tour party, of only thirteen, was almost as strong as could be mustered, with the exception of Arthur Shrewsbury and William Gunn, who did not consider the terms offered were sufficiently generous. The main batsmen were Grace, A.E. Stoddart, Abel, Read, ably supported by all-rounders Briggs, Peel and Attewell, while MacGregor, Bean and Radcliffe would be on their first visit down under. According to one Australian observer, the bowling was ‘as near perfection as possible’, spearheaded by Attewell, Lohmann, Briggs and Peel, who had toured Australia successfully in 1887/88, backed by Sharpe of Surrey, another newcomer to Australian conditions. They would be supported by Grace, Bean, Abel, Read, Stoddart and Radcliffe. The wicket-keepers were MacGregor and Philipson.
In the days before the tourists departed W.G. was embroiled in a bitter dispute with the Gloucestershire president, J.W. Arrowsmith, a Bristol printer and publisher, over a book they had been planning together. The plan was for it to be under W.G.’s name and would be part history of cricket, part autobiography, part W.G.’s thoughts on how to play the game, part his views on his contemporaries. Most of the actual work would be done by W. Methven Brownlee, who had written a slim biography of W.G. published in 1887. There were to be two versions: a de-luxe limited-edition for five hundred subscribers, and a much cheaper mass-market edition. He may have been content for Brownlee to write his book for him but W.G. was keenly interested in its production and how much money he would earn from it, and he was not at all happy with Arrowsmith’s ideas for producing it. On 31 August he wrote to him:
You seem to have commenced the book, without my knowing exactly what you intend to do. I must see the binding and covers before giving my consent, as it must be done nicely or not at all. As to you printing it, as it is, I strongly object and I must have time to go through it carefully. Messrs Fry and Son say they have taken the back page, now I have heard nothing about any advertisement and I must know how many you intend to have in the book and what share I am to have.
Arrowsmith’s immediate reply clearly did not satisfy him, for the same day he reacted furiously:
I do not at all understand the tone of your letter and think … that I had better not at present proceed any further in the matter.
But proceed they did, because a week later W.G. was even angrier:
….I never for one instant dreamt of your doing anything I did not approve of. If you are still going to print the book as you like and not as I like then I have done with you. If you have given up the idea of printing the book just now, and won’t do it at all unless I approve of it then I shall be pleased to dine with you on the 25th …
Arrowsmith continued to fail to mollify W.G. On 20 September, Grace exploded:
… You have agreed to supply the book at 6d per copy, and cannot possibly do it properly for this sum. It is not my fault but yours, and how you can suggest that I should forego my royalty I cannot understand. As I told you before, it is absurd to publish it as you propose and will bring ridicule on you and me, and I will certainly not give you my consent …
The day before the tour party was due to depart, W.G. appeared to have given in, albeit reluctantly:
I enclose order for two books you can please yourself about sending them, I should think that it is all right, send bill to each with book. I have put your letters in the file, and hope our private friendship will be the same as before, although in business matters we do not agree.
The tour party left by train from Liverpool Street station on 2 October 1891, bound for the Albert Docks where they were to board the P & O steamship Arcadia. So many well-wishers turned up at the station to see them off that railway officials had a hard job in keeping them back from the carriages. Among them were many cricketers and county representatives. Lord Sheffield, who was accompanying the party, had gone on by an earlier train while Philipson was travelling overland to Brindisi, where he was to join the ship. Many more friends and family joined the party for the hour-long train trip. There was just half an hour for final leavetakings before the Arcadia sailed at 12.30 p.m. Lord Sheffield had engaged a band to play on the quayside – its rendition of ‘Home, Sweet Home’ brought a lump to many throats – and as the ship cast off there were three cheers for his lordship and another resounding one for the England team.
The voyage was uneventful. The cricketers endeared themselves to their fellow-passengers by putting on a Christy Minstrel show, with W.G. acting as the compere, ‘Mr Johnson’, complete with blacked-up face and powdered beard.
He must have cut an imposing figure on the stage. The part enabled him to display his droll sense of humour. In one sketch Johnny Briggs played a character who told ‘Mr Johnson’ a story about his little dog who had been run over in the Strand. W.G.’s response was meant to be: ‘How did it occur?’
‘It isn’t any more of a cur than you are!’ retorted Briggs.
But in rehearsals, despite careful coaching, W.G. invariably asked: ‘How did it happen?’ ruining the punchline and reducing his colleagues to despair.
On the night of the show, everyone was on tenterhooks, wondering how Briggs, a lively little character, would handle the situation. But when the moment came, W.G. uttered the correct line perfectly; he had been stringing them along all the while. He was in similar excellent form throughout the journey, so much so that he was unanimously voted ‘the merriest heart on board’.
When they got to Australia, the tourists found a country in the grip of recession after the boom years of the 1880s during which the major cities had witnessed explosive growth. The cricketers would help to raise the spirits of a depressed nation. Arcadia docked in Adelaide in the second week of November, and the earl and his team were given an enthusiastic welcome, a large crowd of dignitaries coming on board to welcome them.
The next day the Mayor of Adelaide held a reception in the Town Hall at which one of the guests, having made the journey from Melbourne for the occasion, was Harry Boyle, who had played such an important role in organising the tour. The Englishmen also visited the Adelaide Oval, where South Australia were playing Victoria, and were cheered to the rafters by a large crowd. They arrived just in time to see George Giffen, known as ‘the W.G. Grace of Australia’, live up to the sobriquet by completing a double century. He then hit such a pulverising straight drive that it struck his brother Walter, the other batsman, on the hand as he backed up, crushing his fingers against the bat handle and forcing him to retire hurt. George Giffen went on to make 271, his highest first-class score, and take 9–96 and 4–70 as South Australia won by an innings.