WG Grace

by Low, Robert

  One of his most enjoyable matches for London County that summer was against Whitgift Wanderers at Crystal Palace on 26 June when he took seven wickets, scored 111 not out and put on 100 in less than an hour with his youngest son, Charles, aged eighteen, who made 60. ‘My son also scored 120 on June 24th for Old & Present Students of the Engineering School at the Crystal Palace,’ his father proudly wrote to the cricket statistician and historian F.S. Ashley-Cooper on 3 July. For the last decade of his cricketing career W.G. kept Ashley-Cooper informed of his achievements on the field.

  He was as keen to see all his scores and wickets recorded, however minor the game, as he had been in his heyday. Thus, on 13 December 1900, he reflected on the past season in a note to Ashley-Cooper: ‘I should have scored 1,000 runs only I injured my foot at Lord’s on August 19 and played only twice … afterwards.’ On the reverse he noted: ‘In 1900, W.G. Grace scored 713 runs. He had 21 completed innings and averaged 33. He took 110 wickets average 13 runs per wicket. He played one three-figure innings for London County …’

  In truth, London County was never the serious cricketing project its backers had envisaged but more of a jolly swansong for the Champion in his twilight years. If the committee really wanted it to be a commercial and cricketing success, it may have been a mistake, ironically, to appoint the greatest name in cricket to run it. Perhaps a younger, more ambitious man would have been more successful in the long term. As it was, W.G. and the club’s supporters had a lot of fun during its brief life but it never threatened to join the game’s élite.

  It was more like a precursor of the International Cavaliers, who enlivened Sunday cricket in the 1960s, an ad hoc group of players ranging from the great to the quite good, whose main purpose was to entertain the public. But it did enable many young players to break into the first-class game, which might otherwise have been closed to them. W.G.’s best young capture was the all-rounder Len Braund, who had played two seasons for Surrey and then been released. He played the 1900 season for LCC and, having qualified for another county, moved to Somerset, where he was an immediate success and became a permanent fixture in the England team, while still turning out occasionally for London County.

  On 29 May 1902, came the first move in making peace between W.G. and his old county. He took a London County team to Bristol to play a Charles Townsend XI in a charity match to raise money for the NSPCC. In November he expressed his appreciation to Arrowsmith:

  After the kind way you treated us at Bristol last season, I must say I should like to come again … If you will play us I shall be very pleased and it will be doing us a good turn, I think the match would pay well …

  The match to which he referred was indeed arranged. The following season London County played two matches against Gloucestershire. The first was at Crystal Palace. A.G. Powell, who accompanied the Gloucestershire team to London, set the scene:

  While walking across the ground before the game started the dear old man caught sight of me and came hurrying across with outstretched hand to welcome me, then catching hold of my arm lugged me away on a tour of inspection, for he was very proud of his ground, especially the bowling green. He was unfeignedly delighted to have his old team as guests, and those who played will not soon forget the lavish hospitality bestowed under his direction.

  Nobody forgot the part he played in the match either. Gloucestershire batted first and piled up a large score, but W.G. still managed bowling figures of 6–80. He then proceeded to score 150 and despite a large deficit on first innings London County eventually won by seven wickets. Although the breach had now been healed, W.G. could be forgiven for relishing the result. London won the return match at Gloucester by five wickets, a remarkable double. To complete the peace, Gloucestershire made him a Life Member of the club.

  It was in September 1902 that W.G. took his first ride in a motor-car, courtesy of Harry Preston, the hotelier, who was then dividing his time between Brighton and Bournemouth. W.G. was playing at Bournemouth and had to go on to Hastings. He asked Preston if he could drive him to Brighton. Preston agreed, but added they would have to leave by midday, for the journey took four hours and he did not want to be driving in autumnal gloom. W.G. told him to be at the ground at 11 a.m. He batted first, and allowed the second ball to hit him on the body and then the stumps.

  ‘Out!’ cried the umpire, and before the amazed crowd, and the still more astounded bowler, had realised what had happened, ‘W.G.’ was halfway back to the dressing-room, and a few minutes later he was beside me in the car.

  We reached Brighton safely, and the ‘Old Man’ enjoyed every yard of the drive.

  Its impressive results against Gloucestershire gave a false impression of London County’s progress. The new club’s effective life lasted only until the end of the 1904 season, with an annual programme of about a dozen first-class fixtures and between eighty and ninety lesser games. W.G. made a total of seven centuries in its colours but it never achieved its aim of acceptance into the County Championship and was even turned down by the Minor Counties, at the end of 1904.

  Because of confusion among officialdom, none of its fixtures for 1905 was granted first-class status and that effectively killed the club off. Grace and Murdoch were also ageing, and the lack of first-class status meant it could no longer attract promising younger players.

  For the four first-class fixtures which London County should have played in 1905, the club had to change its name to Gentlemen of England. One of them, on Easter Monday, was against Surrey, led by Tom Hayward. For the county it was an early-season run-out against Grace’s XI, which had a particular significance naturally lost on everybody involved. It was the first-class debut of a young man from Cambridge by the name of Jack Hobbs, who was to become the third first-class player to make a hundred hundreds. The other two were W.G. Grace and Tom Hayward. Hobbs gave notice of his talent with scores of 18 and 88, the top score in the match.

  For W.G. the year was overshadowed by the death in March of W.G. junior. He was only thirty, just a few months older than G.F. had been.

  In 1906 the skeleton of London County had just three first-class games, all as Dr W.G. Grace’s XI, two against Cambridge University and one against the West Indies, who were touring England for only the second time. His teams had varying fortunes against Cambridge. In the first match, at Fenners from 4–6 June, W.G. was in astonishing form for a man of his age as his team inflicted the university’s defeat of the season by seven wickets. He opened the bowling in Cambridge’s first innings, and returned the respectable figures of 2–45, the undergraduates being shot out for 107. Then he marched out to open the batting as well and put the students’ bowling to the sword in his old style. The Times reported:

  Dr Grace played magnificent cricket, batting with perfect ease all round the wicket, and although he was missed in the long field off Mr Napier’s bowling, he seemed to have no difficulty in playing all the bowlers. It was quite a glimpse of his old form he gave.

  The unlucky Napier finally made amends, catching him for 64, but in his second innings W.G. carried on as before, remaining undefeated on 44 in his side’s total of 114–13.

  But he could not sustain his form in the return match at Crystal Palace twelve days later when his side was considerably weaker. Indeed, he appears to have been unable to raise more than ten men at first. His son Charles Butler Grace was presumably co-opted, for he was listed as batting at number eleven in the second innings, having been ‘absent in the first innings’. W.G. made 0 and 1 and his team was beaten by an innings and 41 runs.

  Between the two matches against the undergraduates came the fixture against the West Indians, led by H.B.G. Austin and including the brilliant young batsman, George Challenor, only eighteen years of age, and Lebrun Constantine, father of the legendary Learie. The opening match of their tour, it was played at Crystal Palace, and showed their lack of match practice for they were soundly defeated by 247 runs, W.G. scoring 23 and 9. More extraordinarily, he opened the bowling and t
ook 4–71 and 4–74, his second innings victims including Constantine caught and bowled for a duck and Challenor bowled for 4.

  He had one more big match to come, which must rank as one of the most remarkable performances by an individual player. It was the Gentlemen v Players at The Oval, for which Grace was selected at the request of H.R. Leveson-Gower. By now the pressures of county cricket meant that there was a growing movement to drop the second playing of the famous fixture, for it was becoming increasingly difficult to recruit enough good players. In 1906, only two of the amateurs and six of the professionals who had played in the match at Lord’s the previous week were selected for The Oval. In those circumstances, it was not so strange that a place should be found for W.G.

  The match began on Monday 16 July, two days before his fifty-eighth birthday, and an incredible forty-one years since he had first played in the fixture at the Surrey ground. To compensate for the second-rate nature of many of the players, the Surrey committee cut the admission price to 6d. It did the trick to some extent, as more than six thousand spectators paid to see the opening day, when the Players made 365 all out and were criticised for dull play, although present-day spectators would be delighted to be subjected to such a scoring-rate. In the Gentlemen’s first innings, W.G. batted at number seven and was out for four.

  The Players appeared to be terrified of losing, and having made 335 in their second innings (Grace 7–1–23–1) set the Gentlemen the ridiculous target of 443 in four and a half hours on the third day, W.G.’s fifty-eighth birthday. This time, he opened the batting, with C.J.B. Wood, using a bat he had picked out of George Beldam’s bag. Beldam, who played for Middlesex and was a pioneer of sports photography, told him he could use it but if he made a century he had to sign it and return it. W.G. did his best to oblige, giving the crowd something to remember him by, an innings of 74 in three hours which afforded them the occasional glimpse of his past greatness. Let The Times tell the story:

  His was a great physical effort … While making the first fifty, he played extremely well, watching the ball with much of his old skill and placing it on the leg-side with great certainty. It was but natural that he should tire, and, although his innings had been chanceless he might twice have been caught in the slips before he was caught there. The crowd for a very long time received the strokes he made with enthusiasm, and it was only when the taking of a very long tea interval convinced them that there was no serious effort to bring the match to a serious conclusion that their enthusiasm waned. However, they applauded Dr Grace warmly when he at last got out after what must be regarded as a wonderful batting feat for any man in any class of cricket to accomplish on his fifty-eighth birthday.

  As he re-entered the dressing-room he threw down Beldam’s bat and said, ‘There, I shan’t play again.’ He wasn’t quite accurate about that, but it was certainly his last big match and he had gone out like the lion he was. (Despite not making a century, he returned the bat to Beldam anyway, duly signed.)

  In 1907 and 1908, London County’s (alias Gentlemen of England) fixture list had dwindled to one early-season match against Surrey at The Oval. In 1907 W.G. made 16 and 3. In October 1907, he dutifully sent his season’s statistics to Ashley-Cooper: ‘Batting: Innings 25 Not Out 3, Runs 1051, Average 47; Bowling: Wickets Taken 104, Average per wicket 13.

  W.G.’s first-class career ended in 1908, not in the balmy atmosphere of a late summer evening but with an early-season match interrupted by snow and sleet, but it was a gallant exit none the less. The game between his Gentlemen of England XI and Surrey at The Oval starting on a chilly 20 April was the opening first-class fixture of the 1908 season. Surrey took advantage of the Gentlemen’s frozen fingers to score 390, though Hobbs made a duck. Opening the innings, W.G. made a cautious, patient 15 in an hour and a half before being bowled. But when the Gentlemen followed on 171 runs behind, the old W.G. went into action in his best style. It must have been a memorable cameo. The Times’s correspondent wrote:

  Dr Grace was only at the wickets for half an hour for his runs and his driving and pulling was an object lesson to many a young player. He put plenty of power into his strokes, and his play was really wonderful considering his age. He was seldom at fault in his timing and his placing generally was very accurate.

  All good things come to an end. He was bowled by Busher for 25, the outgunned Gentlemen subsided to defeat by an innings, and W.G.’s first-class career was over, although the press was more preoccupied with the death on the same day of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who had resigned as Prime Minister just 16 days earlier.

  W.G. celebrated his sixtieth birthday in July 1908 with a two-day charity match at Chesham between his XI and Mr W.F. Lowndes’s XI. Because of rain, it ended in a draw; W.G. was run out for a single. On 17 August, he made his final appearance for London County, against MCC in the only setting that was appropriate – Lord’s.

  He opened the batting in London County’s first innings, but the finale was not destined to be a glorious one: he made only a single before being bowled. A young Parsee named Kanga whom W.G. had uncovered from somewhere provided the fireworks with a sparkling innings of 46. Set 146 to win, London County made the runs with four wickets in hand to give W.G. a winning send-off, but, perhaps exhausted from his exertions in the field, he did not bat again.

  At the end of 1908, the Crystal Palace Company wound up the cricket club, and the following year the company itself went into receivership.

  In his sixties, W.G lived the life of a retired gentleman. He and his wife moved to Mottingham, also in south-east London, and he indulged himself in his new passions – golf, bowls and curling in the winter – and followed the Worcester Park Beagles, as enthusiastically as he had tramped the fields of Gloucestershire in his boyhood. He wrote to Charles Blundell: ‘I was out with the Beagles at Chelsfield on Saturday, had good sport for the hounds running about two and a half hours and killed in the end.’ To an old friend, Dick Bell, he wrote in 1911: ‘I beagle Mondays and Fridays, so do not come on those days.’

  Gilbert Jessop has left a delightful cameo of Grace and Murdoch playing golf at Rye, where he was accustomed to play on the Sunday of the Hastings Festival. W.G. brought to golf all the gusto he had given to cricket for the previous forty years. The match in question was at the very beginning of W.G.’s love affair with golf; Jessop reckoned that he and Murdoch had played no more than half-a-dozen games previously. W.G. lashed his tee shot into the ‘Hell’ bunker, a notorious hazard on the Rye course, and seemed likely to win the hole comfortably because Murdoch had already taken seven to get on to the green. W.G. started to climb the steep face of the bunker but ‘the weight of his incoming tread … caused his ball to roll down towards him. To arrest its progress, W.G. took an almighty swipe at it – and I rather fancy that when he fetched up at the bottom with a bump the ball had just beaten him in the ensuing race … The match was halved, Billy winning the hole in twelve to thirteen.’

  Murdoch, who was also a solicitor, travelled back and forth between Britain and Australia. In January 1910, W.G. added a postscript, ungrammatical as ever, to a letter to Ashley-Cooper: ‘I had a postcard a few days ago from W.L. Murdoch he is in Australia again but I believe is coming back again.’ On Saturday, 18 February 1911, Murdoch was watching the fourth Test of the Australia-South Africa series at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where he was a revered figure. In the break after Australia’s second innings had ended during the morning session, the genial old Australian captain predicted that South Africa would lose five wickets before lunch. His forecast was uncannily correct.

  While lunching with the committee, Murdoch remarked: ‘I’ll never make another prophecy again. I’ve brought bad luck on those boys.’ He never spoke a truer word. Shortly afterwards, he complained of feeling ill, and pitched forward on to a table. He died later that afternoon in hospital without regaining consciousness, aged only fifty-four.

  Three months later, W.G. suffered an even greater loss when E.M., who had been in po
or health for some time, died.

  W.G.’s enthusiasm for cricket remained undiminished. On 12 October 1910, he summarised the past season for Ashley-Cooper: ‘I played in 17 matches during the season and had 15 completed innings, scoring 418 runs, average 27.13. My highest score was 71. I only bowled in a few matches but took over 20 wickets. Hoping this will enable you to make up a small paragraph …’

  His eye for a cricketer was as shrewd as ever. In August 1911 he wrote to Francis Lacey, secretary of the MCC, who clearly wanted to know his opinion of the Nottinghamshire all-rounder Ted Alletson. Earlier that season Alletson had made an astonishing 189 in 90 minutes against Sussex, the last 142 taking an incredible 40 minutes. Presumably Lacey wanted to know whether Alletson would be suitable for the MCC ground staff, and was doubtful about his action. W.G.’s letter shows his generous nature, and his distaste for slow play:

  … he has a peculiar action, but I did not think he threw at all when I saw him bowl. He told Jessop that West the umpire said his action was suspicious and told or asked R.O. Jones to take him off. He seems a very quiet and well behaved young fellow, and can just hit and no mistake. I saw him and Jessop together, and the differing styles were very interesting to watch. One crouching down and the other standing straight up and making the most of his height. I think you should engage him, and if you don’t like his action, don’t bowl him in a match. His very fine hitting can induce others to play a fast game, instead of pottering about like most Pros do now. Another young Pro, Haywood of Northants you might engage, he is a good all round young fellow and very good practice bowler.