by Low, Robert
16 · CLOSE OF PLAY
1898–1915
AT first everything seemed set fair. The Jubilee had capped half a century of uninterrupted success, the country had paid homage – and good money – to its Champion. Then life turned sour for W.G. On 11 October 1898, The Sportsman announced the establishment of the London County Cricket Club by the Crystal Palace Company. It was intended to be a blue-chip venture: the executive committee included Sir Richard Webster, the Attorney-General, who had presided over W.G.’s Jubilee dinner in July, although Webster’s new appointment sat oddly with his presidency of the Surrey club of which the new outfit was meant to be a rival; A.J. Webbe, who had retired the previous month as captain of Middlesex after fourteen years in the job and who had often opened the batting with W.G. for various teams; and Sir Arthur Sullivan, the celebrated composer. However, the biggest name involved was the Secretary and Manager: W.G. Grace himself, who, it was announced, would move to the London suburb of Sydenham and ‘devote his whole time’ to getting the new venture off the ground.
Its backers thought they saw what would now be called ‘a gap in the market’: there was a large catchment area of potential cricket-watchers who were a long way from The Oval or Lord’s. London County would play on the Crystal Palace ground in Sydenham, south-east London, which had been laid in 1857 as part of the development of the site following the relocation of Joseph Paxton’s great Crystal Palace there in 1854 (it had originally been erected in Hyde Park as part of the Great Exhibition of 1851).
The news was not well received from the Crystal Palace club, which already played on the ground, but it came as a bombshell to Gloucestershire, for Grace was still its captain. How could he do both jobs properly? Grace was in no doubt that he could; but it did signal the end of his medical career. He may not have minded too much, for local government boundary changes in Bristol had altered the area served by his medical practice, and he was involved in a dispute with the Bristol Board of Guardians over compensation. The offer from Crystal Palace meant he could resign and devote himself entirely to cricket. He would certainly not lose out financially: his salary was said to be £1,000 a year. He also persuaded the Engineering School at Crystal Palace to take in his youngest son, Charles, as a student.
By Christmas Dr and Mrs Grace and family had moved into their new home, St Andrew’s, in Lawrie Park Road, Sydenham. But hardly had they settled in when tragedy struck. In February 1899, their only daughter, Bessie, who had moved to London with them, died of typhoid, which was still a constant menace to the public. She was only twenty and W.G.’s favourite child, bright, bouncy and a talented sportswoman. Much as he loved his three sons, he loved Bessie the most for she was the most like him in character. How strange that a disease which he had helped to combat in Bristol for twenty years should carry away his daughter only months after he had ceased to practise medicine. He and Agnes were devastated. On 19 March W.G. wrote to Cyril Sewell, a talented, South African-born amateur who had made his debut for Gloucestershire in 1895:
I must thank you for your kind letter of sympathy with us in our great trouble and for so kindly attending the funeral on such a dreadful day …
But W.G. was nothing if not practical. He went on to enquire whether Sewell would be available to play for London County in the forthcoming season and added:
The Club is going strong, over 200 members already joined. The pavilion is half up and ground looking well …
Preparations for London County’s new season were indeed proceeding apace. The new pavilion was soon completed, at a cost of £3,000, and more money was spent on improving the pitch and outfield, under the supervision of the old Gloucestershire bowler Bill Murch, by then rather deaf. W.G. converted him into a makeshift wicket-keeper, commenting in a letter a few years later: ‘Murch kept wicket for us, he would be very good but his hands would not stand much fast bowling.’
At first, it looked as if Grace would be able to carry out his responsibilities in Gloucestershire and London. He played in Gloucestershire’s first four games, all away from home, but back in the West Country there was deep unhappiness about his divided loyalties, which may have been brought to a head by the London club’s first game, against Wiltshire at Swindon on 5 and 6 May. Including Grace, there were four Gloucestershire players in the London team: the others were Townsend, Brown and Troup. (Five more came from the Crystal Palace club, with which London shared their home ground.) Two days later, Grace pulled off something of a coup by bringing the Australians, led by the inspirational Joe Darling, to Crystal Palace for their opening match of their tour, against the South of England. The match was drawn, the brilliant newcomer C.B. Fry top-scoring for the South with 81.
The Gloucestershire committee met on 16 May to decide what to do about their wayward captain. They resolved to ask him which county matches he was going to play in that season. Ten days later, they communicated their request by post. They might as well have sent him a letter bomb. Grace’s reply, written on 28 May 1899, is worth quoting in full:
To the Committee of the Gloucestershire County Club.
Gentlemen, in answer to yours of the 26th, re resolution passed on the 16th and kept back from me for reasons best known to yourselves, I beg to state that I had intended to play in nearly all our matches, but in consequence of the resolution passed and other actions of some of the Committee, I send in my resignation as Captain, and must ask the Committee to choose the teams for future games, as I shall not get them up.
I have always tried my very best to promote the interests of the Gloucestershire County Club, and it is with deep regret that I resign my captaincy. I have the greatest affection for the county of my birth, but for the Committee as a body, the greatest contempt.
I am,
Yours truly, W.G. Grace
After that, there was no going back. When the Committee met to consider W.G.’s thunderous missive, it came up with the following resolution:
That while the Committee are conscious of the great services rendered by Dr Grace to the Gloucestershire Cricket Club as well as to cricket generally, and feel deep regret at his severance from them in spite of the efforts which have been made by them to avoid it, they feel they have no course open to them but to accept his resignation.
It was an abrupt and unexpected end to W.G.’s playing days for the county with which his family’s name was virtually synonymous. He had captained the side since its inception in 1870. Gilbert Jessop wrote later:
The news came as a complete surprise to me, for relations between the County Committee and himself had always struck me as being particularly friendly. There seemed to be strong reason why they should be anyway, for the majority of them were close personal friends of the “Old Man”.
But even the closest of friends can fall out. His successor was Walter Troup, who tried, together with J.A. Bush, a member of the committee, to talk W.G. out of quitting but he refused to withdraw his remarks or his resignation.
The saddest side to the affair was that, according to a letter of 19 April to J.J. Sewell, uncle of Cyril, he was on the point of retiring anyway.
Your nephew says he cannot play at all this year, this is a very sad blow to me, it is my last year and I was in hopes of leading Gloucestershire to a few victories during this season … I must ask you to consent to his playing at Blackheath, The Oval, Lords and Brighton, do please grant this request for the good of the poor old county.
A few months later, W.G. was still seething. On 12 July he wrote to Sewell:
… I am glad to hear I am not the only one who the committee dislike, from what I hear, they cannot speak the truth, they are a bad lot and the less you have to say to them the better for you.
But he usually calmed down after his explosions and, true to form, he came to regret his precipitate resignation. Gloucestershire was his first and only love, and he maintained a keen interest in its affairs. E.M., after all, was still the club secretary, and W.G. stayed in contact with other influential figures, like Arrow
smith. He also plundered the county for players, whenever possible, to make up his teams at London County. To the relief of all concerned, the rift between W.G. and Gloucestershire did not last long, as we shall see. Troup captained the side for the rest of the summer and was then replaced by Gilbert Jessop, who led the county until 1912. Although he got Troup to play for London County, W.G. did not rate him very highly as a cricketer, as he revealed in a letter to Arrowsmith a year or two later:
… to give Troup what the club did was simply money wasted. What Jessop gets is another thing as he draws the public which Troup never did and never will.
The summer of 1899 signalled the end of another chapter for W.G. – his England career. On 1 June, the first Test against Australia began at Trent Bridge. It was also the first Test to be played at the Nottingham ground and the first five-Test series to be played in England. That led to another notable novelty: the England team for all five Tests would be chosen by the same selection committee. Until then, there had been three Tests per summer: at Lord’s, The Oval and Old Trafford, with the teams picked by the MCC, Surrey and Lancashire committees respectively. Naturally, W.G. was on the new body, chaired by Lord Hawke, and although approaching his fifty-first birthday was once more selected as captain.
This was hard luck on Arthur Shrewsbury, the idol of Trent Bridge and a mere forty-four, for, as C.B. Fry related, ‘the team could not carry both W.G. and him, since both of them could field at point and nowhere else’. So Shrewsbury was the unlucky one, to his chagrin, and Billy Gunn (only forty-two) was chosen. Their generation was being pressed hard by the outstanding newcomers. Ranji was already an automatic choice, and Fry and MacLaren were pressing hard for inclusion.
In his autobiography, Fry recalled how he was Grace’s first name on the batting list for Trent Bridge on the strength of his 81 against the Australians for London County. Not only that: Grace co-opted him on to the selection committee despite the fact that the twenty-seven-year-old Fry had not yet made his Test debut. In doing so, Grace was to prove the unwitting architect of his own downfall.
The Australians had sent their most powerful team since the all-conquering squad of 1882 and they had much the better of the first Test. On a beautiful summer’s day, there were fifteen thousand people in the ground to watch the start of the historic match. ‘Nottingham has not been so full since the Church Congress,’ commented The Times. Australia batted all day for only 238, attracting some criticism for their slow play. They were out for 252 on the second morning; Grace gave himself twenty overs, in which he conceded only 31 runs.
He opened the batting with Fry, two giants of the game, one of the past, the other of the future. As they walked out to the middle, Grace said to his partner: ‘Now, Charlie, remember that I’m not a sprinter like you.’ However, in contrast to the dour Australians, the two amateurs attacked from the outset on a hard, true wicket. They put on 75 in brisk fashion but as Fry wrote later, ‘Had I been in with Joe Vine of Sussex the score would have been over 100. We lost innumerable singles on the off side, and I never dared to call W.G. for a second run in the long-field.’ It was looking good for England but, as The Times related:
They had hit the bowlers off their pitch and were getting runs quickly, but just when everything was going well a kind of ‘rot’ set in … The turning point of England’s fortunes began with the dismissal of Dr Grace, who treated Noble’s bowling much too cheaply and turned the ball into the wicket-keeper’s hand.
W.G. had made 28. Fry went on to make 50, Ranji 42, but England were all out for only 193. They had gone into the match deprived by injury or unavailability of all their fast bowlers and in their second innings the Australians took full advantage. The tourists declared at 230–8, Clem Hill top-scoring with 80. Crucially, W.G. missed him at point ‘which he could have taken with ease if he could have bent’, said Fry. Grace’s immobility attracted some barracking from the crowd, and although he did eventually manage to get down to another sharp chance to dismiss Hill, by then the damage was done. Set 290 to win, England were four wickets down in less than an hour, including Grace’s, bowled by a sharp break-back from Howell for one.
Nobody realised it at the time, but that one run was W.G.’s last in Test cricket. Ever the realist, he himself read the writing on the wall earlier than anyone else. He was getting on, and Australia had a fit and formidable attack in the shape of Jones (who had slipped that famous ball through Grace’s beard the last time he was in England), Trumble, Noble, McLeod and Howell. An imperious undefeated 93 by Ranji saved the match and England’s face but Grace was not fooled. Immediately the match was over, he confided in F.S. Jackson: ‘It’s no use, Jacker. I shan’t play again.’
He was right. But did he perhaps have second thoughts when it came to picking the side for the second Test, at Lord’s? Fry related how he arrived at the Sports Club in St James’s Square for the selection committee meeting on the Sunday before the match was due to start. He was a few minutes late and as he walked into the room, W.G. said: ‘Here’s Charles. Now Charles, before you sit down, we want you to answer this question, yes or no. Do you think that Archie MacLaren ought to play in the next Test match?’
‘Yes, I do,’ replied Fry without thinking, having a high regard for the young Lancashire man.
‘That settles it,’ said W.G., and Fry went on:
I sat down at the table. Then, and only then, did I discover that the question W.G. had asked me meant, ‘Shall I, W.G. Grace, resign from the England eleven?’ This had never occurred to me. I had thought it was merely a question of Archie coming in instead of one of the other batsmen, perhaps myself. I explained this and tried to hedge, but the others had made up their minds that I was to be confronted with a sudden casting-vote. So there it was. I who owed my place in the England team to W.G.’s belief in me as a batsman gave the casting-vote that ended W.G.’s career of cricket for England.
Fry continued:
Fortunately for my peace of mind I found out afterwards that W.G. himself felt that he ought to retire, not because he could not bat or bowl to the value of his place, but because he could not move about in the field or run his runs.
But surely if W.G. had really been convinced it was time for him to quit, the obvious course would have been to inform his fellow-selectors that he did not wish to be picked again. This he did not do, although he accepted the choice of MacLaren with a good grace. It may well have been that he regretted his outburst to Jackson at Trent Bridge and would happily have gone on playing for England if the selectors had backed him.
W.G. lost not only his place to MacLaren but the captaincy too, although Jackson was felt by some to have a greater claim. The change did not bring the desired result. Australia won the Lord’s Test decisively and managed to avoid defeat in the remaining matches of the rubber to take it 1–0.
W.G. had played twenty-two Tests (all against Australia, the only other Test-playing country) over nineteen years, scored 1,098 runs at an average of 32.29, with five centuries and a highest score of 170, taken nine wickets at 26.22 each and held 39 catches. What figures might he have recorded if countries like South Africa, India and the West Indies had also been playing Test cricket in his era?
The result of these dramatic events was that for the rest of 1899 W.G. was able to devote himself to the affairs of London County. A second match against the Australians at Crystal Palace was arranged for immediately after the fourth Test at Old Trafford, although the home team was billed as Dr W.G. Grace’s XI. Both Alec Hearne and Len Braund scored centuries for him but the match ended in a draw. W.G. was in fine form for his new team for the rest of the summer. He made 1,092 runs for them at an average of 84 and four centuries, including 175 not out against the new first-class county of Worcestershire, and also picked up fifty wickets. But these runs or wickets did not count towards his career statistics as none of London County’s twenty-seven games was granted first-class status.
As the century came to its end, Grace could look back on twelve mo
nths in which his medical, county and international careers had also been wound up.
London County applied to be admitted to the county championship to open the new century but were turned down, hardly surprising in view of their brief history and tenuous financial prospects. Attendances during their first season had been by no means overwhelming and cricket’s administrators, notoriously conservative at the best of times, could be forgiven for requiring much more evidence of London County’s long-term prospects. W.G.’s only consolation was that London’s matches against first-class counties, MCC and the universities would be counted as first-class fixtures. He managed to arrange thirteen of them, plus a further fifty-seven games.
He also recruited his old friend and adversary, forty-six-year-old W.L. ‘Billy’ Murdoch, the former Australian captain, who had settled in England, captained Sussex for six seasons and even played one Test for his new country (in South Africa). If W.G. had one bosom buddy in the last decade of his cricketing life, it was W.L. Although the Australian was six years younger, they had had remarkably similar careers, and held roughly similar roles within the game in their respective countries. In the first Test match played in England, back in 1880, they had had almost identical scores, Murdoch’s 153 pipping Grace by 1 run. Like Grace, Murdoch was both a massive accumulator of runs, and a genial and popular father figure. Once Murdoch had moved to England in 1893, he and Grace often socialised and played golf together.
W.G. found it difficult, however, to recruit a regular line-up of other good players, although he himself had a productive season with bat and ball: 2,273 runs and 133 wickets in all games. He made centuries against Worcestershire and MCC, and half-centuries against Derbyshire, Warwickshire and Cambridge University. He was of course free to play in other matches: his finest display in 1900 was 126 for South v North at Lord’s, in a benefit match for the dressing-room superintendent.