I can recall his form as if it were yesterday; his straight and true bowling – much faster than it is now, and not quite so high in delivery – the wonderful straightness of his bat, and the wonderful push off the leg stump, the stroke that has made him famous above every other cricketer of the age.
It may have been a relief to go on from the Lord’s pitch north to Southgate in Middlesex, where W.G. made 14. Then he returned to Lord’s for a two-day game against I Zingari, the last of the London season. It opened on 28 July, W.G.’s sixteenth birthday, and to celebrate he and E.M., opening the innings together for the first time, put on 81 before W.G. was out for 34. He made 47 in the second innings to round a memorable first expedition to the capital. For South Wales that summer he averaged 48, and in all matches he topped a thousand runs (totalling 1,079), including 126 for Clifton v Fownes’s XI in August. He had forced his way on to the national cricket stage, and was not to take his leave until the next century. John Lillywhite’s Companion commented soberly: ‘Mr W.G. Grace promises to be a good bat; bowls very fairly.’
W.G. spent the winter of 1864–5 in customary fashion, hunting, shooting and fishing with his brothers. He always walked long distances too and in this way he kept fit for the cricket season. Now that he had suddenly exploded on to the scene, W.G. was in great demand in the summer of 1865. Everybody wanted the extraordinary youth from Gloucestershire in their team. Was he really as good as his performances the previous summer appeared to indicate?
With Henry and E.M., he turned out in June for a Lansdown Club Eighteen against the United All England Eleven, the professional touring troupe set up by disgruntled former members of William Clarke’s All-England outfit. E.M. was the dominant figure of the match, hitting a magnificent 121 including a six into the river Avon. The Grace brothers had the distinction of taking all the wickets in each of the opposition’s innings, All England being dismissed for the paltry totals of 99 and 87.
When W.G. accompanied E.M. to play against Marlborough College, one of the school team was R.F. Miles, who later played with them for Gloucestershire. He recalled W.G. as ‘a long lanky boy, who bowled very straight with a good natural leg curl.’
W.G.’s first chance to display his progress away from the West Country that summer came with an invitation to play for the Gentlemen of the South against the Players of the South at The Oval, starting on 22 June 1865. Such was the Gentlemen’s confidence in the prodigy that he went in first wicket down, an honour which he himself felt was unjustified. Perhaps weighed down by the responsibility, he was soon back in the pavilion, out, stumped for a duck. But this failure was more than outweighed by his success with the ball. Bowling unchanged through both the Players’ innings, he took 5–44 in the first innings and followed up with the extraordinary figures of 8–40 in the second to secure victory for the Gentlemen by an innings and 58 runs. The opinions of the professionals at being skittled by a sixteen-year-old were not recorded. The Surrey club presented him with the ball, inscribed and mounted.
Ten days later, on the same ground, W.G. made his first appearance in a match which he was to dominate for the next forty-one years, the fixture that embodied the yawning social gulf that divided the game, Gentlemen v Players. The fortunes of the two teams charted the progress of the sport. For the previous decade, it had been dominated by the professionals; the Players had beaten the Gentlemen in nineteen consecutive games since 1854 (in those days the fixture was played twice a season, at Lord’s and The Oval). It is no exaggeration to say that W.G.’s arrival transformed it: his last appearance for the Gentlemen would be in 1906 at The Oval and in that time they lost only four more times. He was to dominate the fixture as no one else before or since, scoring 6,008 runs and taking 276 wickets. He made fifteen centuries, more than any other batsman, and frequently carried his team to success on his own shoulders.
W.G.’s debut at The Oval was the first time Lord Cobham had seen him. He provided this impression of him:
He was a tall, loose-limbed lean boy, with some appearance of delicacy and, in marked contrast with his brother E.M., quiet and shy in manner. He looked older than he was, and indications of the great beard which subsequently distinguished him through life were even then apparent.
W.G. turned in a solid all-round performance, again impressing more by his bowling than his batting: and catching the eye with a superb display of fielding at cover-point. He batted eighth and scored 23 and 12 not out, impressing one of the 5,000 spectators with his ‘excellent form’. At least he outscored E.M., who opened the batting but made only 8 and 10. In the Players’ first innings W.G. had figures of 40–9–65–4, in the second 35–12–60–3, a lot of bowling and a highly economical performance in a high-scoring game. It was his assessment that the batting of the teams was about equal but the professionals’ bowling was far superior, even though they were without all their northern stars, who had refused to take part. They still won comfortably enough, by 118 runs.
It was a different story five days later in the return match at Lord’s. This was a much more low-scoring affair, because of the dreadful pitch, ‘almost unplayable’ according to R.D. Walker of the Gentlemen. It was dominated by the ageing George Parr, who scored 60 for the Players in his last appearance in the fixture he had graced since 1846, and the irrepressible E.M. There was a fitting circularity about the appearances of Parr and W.G. When Parr was first picked for the Players he had been only eighteen and the selection of one so young was thought to be exceptional. Now, as he bowed out, a similar prodigy who was even younger had arrived.
The Players won the toss and batted but were all out for only 132. W.G. opened the bowling but took no wickets. It was the first time C.E. Green, later a great figure in Essex cricket, had seen W.G. in action. He described his bowling action at the time:
In those days his arm was as high as his shoulder – that is as high as it was then allowed by cricket law – and while his delivery was a nice one, his action was different to what it was in his later days; it was more slinging and his pace was fast medium. He had not then acquired any of his subsequent craftiness with the ball. He used to bowl straight on the wicket, trusting to the ground to do the rest.
W.G. and E.M. opened the batting for the Gentlemen but the partnership was short-lived: W.G. was run out for only 3. E.M.’s innings was typically explosive: he hit a six through a bedroom window of the old tavern and was then given out lbw for 24 ‘at which decision dissatisfaction was loudly expressed by some of the spectators’, according to The Times. The Gentlemen made 198, E.M. taking six wickets, and then dismissed the Players for 140, leaving themselves only 75 to win. The Grace brothers saw to it that the target was reached without trouble, W.G. making 34, E.M. 30. The Gentlemen’s eight-wicket victory was their first in nineteen fixtures. The tide had turned.
There was plenty more action for W.G. at the top level that summer. A week later he played for The Gentlemen of England v The Gentlemen of Middlesex at Islington, Middlesex’s county ground, where E.M. continued his rich vein of form with 111 in the second innings. W.G. contributed 48 and 34. His highest score of the summer was 85, for South Wales against I Zingari and he was disappointed not to have made a century. He even found himself playing for Suffolk when he popped into Lord’s one day and was pressed into service by the county, who were two men short for the match against MCC, underlining the casual nature of much of cricket in those days. There was no fairytale ending, alas: W.G. failed in both innings with the bat and had to watch in the field while E.M. (who else?) struck a refulgent 82.
Further recognition came with selection for England v Surrey at The Oval in the last major match of the season, although his was clearly not yet a household name: in its preview The Times called him Mr N.G. Grace. Several thousand spectators were in attendance to see him opening with E.M. He batted solidly for 35, the brothers putting on more than 80 before being parted. Rain denied W.G. the chance of another knock, causing the match to be abandoned on the second day. The season ended on a note of low comedy, with E.M. inevitably at the centre of a highly controversial incident, which threatened to spoil a benefit match between a Gentlemen of the South of England XVIII and the United South of England, played at The Oval to raise money for the professional bowlers attached to the ground.
E.M.