by Low, Robert
On the original aim of the tour, to revive interest in cricket, Tom Horan was in no doubt: ‘It is now the concurrent testimony of all that the visit has caused a cricket revival which has surpassed even the most sanguine anticipations of those who viewed the tour favourably when it was first proposed.’
The English party left Adelaide bound for home on the steamship Valetta. It was Grace’s last look at Australia. He never went back to the land where they mixed awe and dislike for him in about equal measure.
14 · RESURRECTION
1892–1897
IT might have been expected that the forty-three-year-old W.G. would return from the gruelling Australian tour exhausted. Nothing could have been further from the case. Perhaps the long sea voyage home helped to restore him – that and his naturally robust constitution. At any rate he returned to the English scene reinvigorated, rather as he had done in 1874.
He and his fellow tourists were back in action together a week after landing, against the Rest of England in a benefit match at Trent Bridge for their manager Alfred Shaw. Rain severely curtailed proceedings, as it always seemed to whenever his colleagues tried to raise money for Shaw, but Grace still managed to make a fine 63 in even time out of 80. It was the start to a consistent, if not outstanding season, in which he again failed to make a century in England. This time he missed out on that milestone by only one run, for Gloucestershire against Sussex at Gloucester. He was stuck on 99 for several overs until he lost patience, tried to hit his fellow Australian tourist, George Bean, back over his head and was caught and bowled. It was only as he walked back to the pavilion that he noticed from the scoreboard that he had been so close to three figures, and demanded crossly of his brother E.M.: ‘Ted, why ever you didn’t you tell me? I could have scored off any of those balls.’
‘Aye, aye,’ replied E.M., ‘and if I had told you, you would have been the first to complain.’
Although hampered for much of the season by a bad knee, which severely reduced his mobility at the wicket and in the field, he played many other good innings for Gloucestershire. For the first time, the nine teams in the county championship played each other home and away and Gloucestershire had high hopes of doing well, particularly as the Australian fast bowler J.J. Ferris, who had always played well in England, had qualified for the county by residence. In the event, he was a great disappointment. By modern standards, he performed excellently, with eighty first-class wickets at 24.80 each, but that left him only twenty-first in the averages. Grace considered that Ferris’ poor summer had a discouraging rather than encouraging effect on his team-mates, who had hoped for so much from their new recruit.
Surrey carried all before them to emerge as champions. Gloucestershire could manage only seventh place, third from bottom. Grace also finished seventh in the first-class batting list, totalling 1,055 runs at an average of 31, making 47, 72 not out (at Lord’s) and 89 (at Lord’s) against Middlesex, and 41 and 54 in two appearances for the Gentlemen v Players at Hastings.
Both the public and the committee were getting fed up with Gloucestershire’s continuing poor performances, and there was no doubt in the minds of many where the blame lay – with the captain and his selection policy. There was no doubt that W.G. was a very astute judge of a cricketer, but when it came to picking the Gloucestershire team he had a preference for public-school and university men over local club players. In the mid-1890s this was to pay off, particularly with his selection on slender evidence of Charles Townsend and Gilbert Jessop, who were to prove two pillars of the county side. But many of the players W.G. picked were not worthy of their place.
In 1892 the county’s future was looking bleak, and opposition grew towards the authoritarian captain. The outcome was that in December 1892 some members of the committee proposed a selection committee. No decision was taken, but W.G. brooded on this unprecedented challenge to his authority over Christmas and by the time of the next meeting in January 1893 he had communicated his resignation from both committee and captaincy. The committee immediately retreated. ‘They beg to remind him of the assurance then given him, that the Committee did not wish to take any action distasteful or antagonistic to him as they still have the same confidence in his captaincy now as previously to the meeting on 9 December …’ W.G. did not withdraw his resignation. He merely played – and captained – on.
The following season, 1893, Grace registered a further improvement, finishing fifth in the first-class averages on 35.75. His total of 1,609 was bettered by only two other batsmen (Gunn and Stoddart, who both passed 2,000). He made only one century, 128 for MCC v Kent at Lord’s, but was in cracking form in the first Gentlemen v Players game, at The Oval, with 57 and 68 against top-quality bowling. ‘After twenty-nine years of continuous work in first-class cricket, he is still the noblest Roman of them all,’ marvelled the ‘Pavilion Gossip’ writer of Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game.
W.G. reserved some of his best performances for his appearances against the Australian tourists, again led by Blackham, who were a powerful batting side let down by their bowling. Grace and Stoddart had four century opening partnerships for MCC and England, and two others of 75-plus. Grace set the tone for the summer with 63 for Lord Sheffield’s XI in the opening match of the tour. He did not, however, have it all his own way against the Australians. They took 503 off Gloucestershire at Bristol, condemning W.G. and his team to two long days in the field. The grey-haired George Giffen confirmed his reputation as the W.G. of the southern hemisphere with 180, his highest score in England. W.G.’s bowling figures were 57–22–137–2. When the county side finally batted, they put up a dismal display and were shot out for only 41. Batting at number ten, W.G. contributed an unbeaten four. Only rain saved Gloucestershire from defeat on the most monumental scale.
In the tourists’ next match, against a Grace-led MCC team, J.J. Lyons produced one of the most memorable innings of that or any other summer, a storming 149 in 95 minutes to help save the game, which lingered as long in the folk memory as Ian Botham’s identical score in 1981 against Australia was to do. Grace made 13 in MCC’s first innings total of 424, and 33 in the second innings when he and Stoddart put on 72 for the first wicket against bowlers who found it difficult to grip the ball after an interruption for rain. In the end, a match that England looked to have in the bag finished in an exciting draw. In the return match, Grace made 75.
For South of England he scored 66, during which he passed 40,000 runs in first-class cricket, completed in 967 innings, at an average of more than 41. No other cricketer had compiled even half that total at that time. He added to the total in Arthur Shrewsbury’s England XI at Trent Bridge – Shrewsbury’s benefit match – when he and Stoddart put on 114 for the first wicket, Grace’s contribution being 49. He was in his best form, hitting six boundaries until, going for his half-century he skyed a delivery from Turner and was caught by Giffen circling behind the bowler. Shrewsbury himself made an unbeaten 52 and his XI, which was virtually the full England team, thrashed the Australians by an innings and 153 runs.
Grace had to pull out of the first Test Match proper, at Lord’s, because of an injured finger – it was the first Test he had ever missed in England, and was otherwise notable for the debut of F.S. (later Sir Stanley) Jackson, the brilliant young Cambridge captain, whose fag at Harrow had been one Winston Spencer Churchill, and who marked his first performance with 91.
Grace was fit again for the second Test at The Oval in which he took back the captaincy from Stoddart. The Surrey club generously made the game Maurice Read’s benefit, although he was not playing; it was the first time the ‘gate’ for an official Test had been made over to a player in this fashion. W.G. won the toss and shared a resolute opening partnership of 151 with Stoddart against tight and hostile bowling in punishing heat. Most of their runs at first came from edges through the slips and ‘four balls out of five had to be played with the utmost caution, not to say diffidence’, according to one report. ‘Giffen seemed especially di
fficult, and while Stoddart generally dropped down on him very late, Grace played him as a rule forward.’ At lunch they were undefeated on 134, but were late coming out afterwards, while both the Australians and the umpires lay down on the grass ‘to wait for the time when it might please the batsmen to put in an appearance. There were ominous rumours that Grace’s finger had again broken down, and that Stoddart had sunstroke.’ Happily neither rumour was true. At 151, Stoddart was out for 83, and Grace followed without further addition to the score, caught at slip off Trumble for 68. ‘Though he never seemed comfortable, and was often beaten, he showed much of his old skill.’
Then Jackson capped his first Test performance with a brilliant century in England’s total of 483 and Australia were shot out for 91. Following on, they made a much more respectable 349 but England still won by an innings and 43 runs. The weather was extremely hot throughout the match and the Cricket Field noted:
As the majority of the players on both sides wore wide white hats, which threw their faces into deep shadow, it became a work of difficulty to recognise them while they were in the field. W.G. was the only exception, for, owing to his beard, his patch of black was very much bigger than that of anybody else.
It was the decisive result of the series, for the final match, at Old Trafford, ended in another draw. In Australia’s first innings, Grace caught Trott at third man: ‘Grace ran in with all the vigour and dash of his youthful days and captured the ball close to the ground,’ reported the Sportsman. When England batted, he compiled a slow 40 after running Stoddart out for a duck; he was eventually bowled off his pads by Bruce. In the final innings, England were set a target of 198 in 135 minutes; Grace and Stoddart rattled up 78 at almost a run a minute before Stoddart went for 42. Grace was caught by Trott off McLeod for 45 with the score on 100, and the match petered out with England 80 short and six wickets still in hand.
But while England’s fortunes had revived, Gloucestershire’s were going in the opposite direction. They finished bottom of the county table, although Grace headed the averages, and produced several fine performances, notably 96 against Middlesex, 75 against Sussex, and a 61 against Surrey, when the rest of the side managed only 44. On the plus side for Gloucestershire was the debut in August 1893 of W.G.’s godson, Charles Townsend, then still a Clifton College schoolboy. Son of Frank Townsend, who had played with the Graces during Gloucestershire’s formative years, Townsend was to become the deadliest leg-spinner in the English game and subsequently one of its finest left-hand batsmen.
Another county debutant the same month was Grace’s eldest son, W.G. junior, who had a good record with the bat for Clifton College. While Townsend’s selection at the age of only sixteen was a risk which came off triumphantly, W.G.’s choice of his son was a classic example of the weakness for which he had attracted so much criticism, for young W.G. was no more than a good public-school player. Typically, Grace blamed Gloucestershire’s disastrous summer partly on his own bad luck in losing the toss ten times out of sixteen.
There was still the matter of his future to decide. In September he withdrew his resignation but the committee again raised, somewhat gingerly, the question of a selection committee. Would he be prepared to consider the idea? His reply was unambiguous: ‘I will have nothing to do with it.’ That was the end of the matter, for a few years at least. The chores of captaincy were not confined to battles with the committee. There were always more mundane matters to attend to, as a letter to a Charles Blundell, now in the Lord’s archives, demonstrates (with W.G.’s usual lordly indifference to grammatical niceties):
You asked me for the County ground for the match today. I had a pitch prepared and luncheon ordered 1/- per head. Yesterday my son heard that the match was at Bath. Whose fault is this. It is very awkward to tell the caterer there is no luncheon after ordering it.
Things were no better for Gloucestershire and Grace in 1894. The county again finished bottom of the table and Grace’s form was lamentable. In 16 innings for his county he managed an average of only 18.9. His highest score was a rapid 88 against Sussex at Brighton in May, and he made 61 against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge but his highest score in the home matches was only 49.
In all first-class cricket he scored 1,293 at an average of 29.38 but many of these were ‘soft’ runs. He hit two of his three centuries of the summer for MCC against Cambridge University, who had a notably weak bowling attack, including his highest-ever score at Lord’s, 196. There was now a family connection with Cambridge: W.G. junior had gone up to Pembroke College the previous autumn and had high hopes of a Blue as a freshman after a good record at Clifton, but although he scored 88 in the freshmen’s trial match, he was not picked for the university side in his first year.
It cannot have been easy being the son of the most famous player in the game, a problem that has been faced by many sons of distinguished players since then. As so often happens, W.G. junior was a perfectly competent player who had none of his father’s extraordinary talent (how could he?), or even that of his uncles Ted or Fred. ‘He was a very useful all-round cricketer,’ said Gilbert Jessop, who made his Gloucestershire debut in 1894, and was a generous soul, ‘being an especially fine mid-off.’
Although there is plenty of evidence that W.G. was a kindly man towards children, he seems sometimes to have been less than charitable towards his eldest son. One Bristol club cricketer remembered getting into a cab with them when W.G. junior accidentally stepped on his father’s foot. ‘W.G. stormed and raved at his son for a good five minutes. The son meekly expressed his regret and, eventually, managed to appease the great man’s wrath.’
W.G. senior fell into the familiar parental trap of taking too great an interest in his son’s sporting progress. A notable Bristol athlete, J.W.S. Toms, recalled:
‘W.G.’ was very keen for his son, young ‘W.G.’, to win the Public Schools’ quarter-mile championship and asked me to help in his preparation. The training was on the County Ground and very drastic it was, too. ‘W.G.’, believing in stamina, would make me run 350 to 400 yards all out. Then he would yell until the finish, ‘Come on, lazy bones!’
To ‘W.G.’s’ disappointment, his son was second in the fastest time recorded up to that date.
W.G. overdid the pressure when it came to cricket too. When his son was not picked for the University’s match against the MCC at Fenner’s, he picked him for MCC instead. Father and son opened the batting for MCC only for W.G. junior to suffer the humiliation of a duck. W.G. senior showed the difference in class by making 139. To rub salt in the young man’s wound, exactly the same thing happened in the return match at Lord’s: he was dismissed without scoring while his father went on to make 196. W.G. junior did make 54 in the second innings, but it was off an exhausted Light Blue attack.
However, to his father’s pride and delight, he managed to get his Blue the following year, and performed creditably in the University match, opening the innings and making 40 and 28, W.G. parading in the Long Room in a new hat and coat. Unfortunately, in his final year, W.G. junior reverted to type – he made a ‘pair’ against Oxford. As he trudged back to the Lord’s pavilion after his second duck, his mother and sister Bessie, who had made the journey from Bristol to watch him, sat in silence, tears streaming down their faces.
A quiet, bespectacled man who had none of his father’s ebullience and indeed seemed unlike anyone else in the extrovert Grace clan, W.G. junior played little first-class cricket after that. He was saddled with the unfortunate nickname ‘Sally’ and broke with the family tradition of going into medicine. A brilliant student, who was Fifth Senior Optima in the Mathematical Tripos of 1896, he became a schoolmaster, first at Oundle, then at the Royal Naval College, Osborne, on the Isle of Wight. He died in 1905, aged only thirty, after an emergency operation for appendicitis.
W.G. senior’s best batting against quality bowling in 1894 came, yet again, for the Gentlemen in their three games against the Players: 71 at The Oval, a particularly meritorious 56
on a rain-affected pitch at Lord’s, and a spectacular 131 at Hastings, although he had the good luck to play the ball on to his stumps and get away with it before he had scored. It was one of the rare bright spots in an otherwise unremarkable season, another being a nine-wicket haul against the first South African team to tour England, although they were not good enough to merit first-class status.
It looked to the world as if Grace was in gradual decline, and he could not even please the Gloucestershire folk who had followed him so adoringly for so long. When Sussex came to Bristol on the August bank holiday, heavy overnight rain followed by another downpour during lunch caused play to be abandoned at 3 p.m. without a ball being bowled. Thinking he would placate the large crowd which had waited patiently for play to begin, W.G. organised an impromptu football match on the practice ground but badly misjudged the spectators’ mood. When he and his team ran out in what Jessop described as ‘hastily improvised accoutrement’, the crowd took it badly and, gathering in front of the pavilion, demanded their money back. The demonstrators would probably have dispersed had the haughty young C.B. Fry, of Sussex, not appeared and ‘cocked a snook’ at them. They jostled the players as they tried to leave, and one group even took their anger out on a section of the pitch.
In 1894 MCC supervised the biggest shake-up the county championship had ever seen, setting in place for the 1895 season the framework of the system that has survived, with a few additions and amendments, to the present day. Derbyshire, Warwickshire, Essex, Hampshire and Leicestershire were granted first-class status and admitted to the championship, making a total of 14. The new counties brought an influx of promising new players to the game, to add to a fresh generation of outstanding cricketers like Archie MacLaren and Ranjitsinhji who were already making their mark in the older counties and the universities. But Grace was not ready to cede the stage to them just yet.