Gentlemen’s innings and was clearly in high spirits. The renowned stonewaller Henry Jupp was at the wicket, determined to save the game in the final innings. All else having failed to remove him, E.M. announced that he knew how to do so. He was variously reported as saying ‘I’ll give him a high toss’ and ‘I can do it with a lob.’
Whatever the precise words, the intention was clear: E.M. delivered a high under-arm lob which rose some 15 yards into the air before descending towards the startled batsman. Jupp hit it away for 2 but E.M. was not put off. He ignored the booing of a section of the crowd and his next ball was a similar one. The difference was that Jupp left it alone. Unfortunately for him it landed on his wicket and the umpire gave him out. He walked, albeit reluctantly, but the crowd was was incensed. The game was held up for an hour while the spectators made their displeasure known in the frankest terms. So menacing was the atmosphere that E.M. and a couple of his team-mates grabbed stumps with which to defend themselves in case a riot started. Eventually the crowd quietened down and the game restarted. After it E.M. was presented with two bats to mark his half-centuries, for the seventy-fifth time. What he did with all his bats is unclear – probably the hammering they received meant their lives were short.
The season had been a constant learning curve for W.G: he found professional bowling a very different proposition from the amateur stuff he was used to, and it required all his patience to adjust to their consistent length. ‘I took no liberties,’ he gravely observed. The difference between first-class and other bowling was evident in his batting averages for 1865. In all matches, he scored 2,169 runs at an average of 40. But in his eight first-class innings, he managed only 189 runs at an average of 27. Still, as the summer came to an end he felt he was making progress.
Over the winter W.G. continued to grow and by the start of the 1866 season, he stood 6 ft 1 in tall and weighed nearly 12 stone. He warmed up for the first-class season with the usual round of local matches, hitting two centuries for Clifton and another for Bedminster. Then he made his first journey away from the south and west to sample cricket in the North. E.M. had been asked to captain eighteen Colts of Nottingham and Sheffield against the might of the All England XI at Sheffield, but when E.M. was unable to fulfil the engagement his brilliant younger brother was invited to take over. It was both an honour and a challenge for a seventeen-year-old, particularly in an alien atmosphere.
W.G. found it a strange experience. He and his team had to climb a steep hill to get to the Hyde Park ground, which he found very primitive, though he had no criticism of the pitch. The industrial landscape of Sheffield was obviously an eye-opener to the country boy from Gloucestershire. ‘I felt as if I had got to the world’s end, and a very black and sooty one it seemed,’ he wrote later. The youthful XVIII was soundly beaten but W.G. scored 9 and 36 and performed creditably enough as captain.
His next major engagement was for the Gentlemen v the Players at Lord’s, beginning on 26 June. Before a crowd estimated at between four and five thousand the Players won the toss and batted. E.M. and W.G. bowled through most of the innings, including a spell of eighteen overs in which they conceded only 3 runs. They shared all the wickets, six to E.M., four to W.G.
The Players made only 116 but the Gentlemen only 20 more, W.G. top-scoring on the usual difficult Lord’s track with 25, all singles. Thanks to a magnificent 122 by Tom Hearne in their second innings, the Players ran out winners by 38 runs (W.G. taking two more wickets but contributing only 11 runs in the Gentlemen’s second innings).
The return match started next day at The Oval, W.G. contributing greatly to victory for the Gentlemen by taking nine wickets in the game, though he did little with the bat. It was the Gentlemen’s first win at The Oval since the fixure had been played there, and the secretary of the Surrey club presented each member of the team with a bat to mark the milestone. W.G.’s mediocre form made his performance, when once again invited to play for an England XI against Surrey at The Oval at the end of July, all the more unexpected. Batting at number five, he scored 224, his first double century and the highest individual score at The Oval until then. He had just turned eighteen. In that massive total there were only two fives and eight fours. All the runs were literally that, reflecting W.G.’s superb state of fitness.
He was in his physical prime, tall but slim and brilliantly athletic, so much so that his captain, the great Middlesex all-rounder, V.E. Walker, benevolently allowed him to take the second afternoon of the game off, while his side was fielding, to compete in a big athletics competition, the National Olympian Association meeting, at the Crystal Palace, several miles away. Perhaps he thought the young man deserved a rest. Shrugging off the effects of his mammoth score, W.G. won the 440 yards hurdles in 1min 10 sec, considered then to be a fast time, before returning to The Oval, although he need not have bothered. In their two innings the eleven men of Surrey were unable to equal even his score, never mind England’s, and lost by an innings and 296 runs.
Between 1866 and 1870 W.G. was almost as keen on running as playing cricket, and with E.M., he was an enthusiastic competitor at athletic meetings throughout the summer, usually in Bristol and neighbouring towns like Cheltenham, but sometimes travelling to London for major events. Races were often sponsored by public houses and held on the road, with handicaps, substantial prizes for the winners and a great deal of betting from the spectators. The main venue in Bristol for organised meetings was the Zoological Gardens at Clifton, where the organisation was frequently chaotic.
W.G. was an excellent sprinter and hurdler, who would run in sprints ranging from the 100 yards (in which his best time was a highly creditable 10.45 seconds) to the 400 yards (52.15). He would sometimes enter field events such as the long jump, the high jump, the hop skip and jump (as the triple jump was then called), and throwing the cricket ball, in which he was a mighty performer with a best of 117 yards.
In 1869 when he recorded seventeen firsts and nine seconds he was at his peak, but the next season, in which he competed in fewer meetings, turned out to be his last. He also played the growing game of rugby football a few times, and must have been a formidable performer, but one crushing tackle from an opponent of similar proportions convinced him that he could endanger his cricket career if he carried on, a surprisingly modern approach.
His epic knock at The Oval was no flash in the pan, and may even have been bettered in terms of quality by his display at the end of August for the Gentlemen of the South against the Players of the South, at The Oval, rapidly becoming his favourite ground. The Gentlemen were acknowledged to be fielding an under-strength side but that only served to inspire the young Gloucestershire colossus. First he rattled through the Players with the ball, taking 7–92, including the obdurate Jupp for the third time in major matches that summer. Then he surpassed that – and himself – with the bat, scoring a brilliant 173 not out, of 240 while he was at the wicket, with two sixes, two fives, 14 threes and 16 twos. Cricket reports in the newspapers of the day were apt to be curt affairs, detailing little more than the scores and conveying little or nothing of the atmosphere of the day’s play. But The Times correspondent was roused to rare superlatives:
A finer innings could not be witnessed; good bowling (with several changes) being tried against him; but his runs were gained in admirable cricket form, not even the shadow of a chance for a catch being given. During the play he was frequently applauded; but upon retiring the applause was general.
The bowling, moreover, was of the highest class, including James Lillywhite and Ned Willsher. But perhaps the most interesting fact about his innings was that it showed how thoughtful and thorough – one might even say professional – W.G. was about his cricket. During that summer, he had given a lot of thought to field placing in the first-class game. The prevailing othodoxy was that batsmen should play straight bowling defensively. Consequently, there was no need to have anyone fielding in the deep because big hitting was almost non-existent.
The Grace brothers broke from this with a vengeance. E.M. was the first to cock a snook at the theory: to him, every ball was fair game, to be hit out of the ground if possible in his own unique flailing style. Observing his success, frequently from the non-striker’s end, W.G. determined to copy his example, and put it into practice against the Players of the South.
Every time I had a ball the least bit overpitched, I hit it hard over the bowler’s head, and did