WG Grace. Robert Low

bearing the Gloucestershire name (it was not properly constituted until three years later). Appropriately for the family which was to dominate the county’s formative years, three of the Grace brothers played: E.M., W.G. and young Fred, still only seventeen but a batsman of the greatest promise. Their opponents were Middlesex Club and Ground, and the Graces bowled every ball against them, Gloucestershire emerging victorious by 134 runs. Although it would be another two years before they engaged another county, Gloucestershire were on their way.

      In the summer of 1869, W.G. reached two landmarks: his twenty-first birthday and membership of the MCC. So eager was the club to enrol the young tyro that he was proposed by the Treasurer, T. Burgoyne, and seconded by the Secretary, R.A. (Bob) Fitzgerald (also spelt FitzGerald), who had been a vigorous reformer since taking up the post in 1863 and who was to be a stout friend and ally of W.G. Indeed, his championing of W.G. can be seen as evidence of his radical ways, for while there was no doubt that he was the finest batsman in the land, his somewhat obscure origins (to the metropolitan eye at least) would not normally have qualified him for MCC membership.

      W.G. did not disappoint his patrons, making a century on his debut, 117 against Oxford University on Magdalen College’s ground at Cowley Marsh, and three more before the end of the season, against Surrey, Nottinghamshire and Kent. It was the start of a long and distinguished association in which W.G. was to score 7,780 runs, including nineteen centuries. In all matches in 1869, he scored nine centuries and was universally regarded as the finest batsman then playing the game. In its summary of the season, Lillywhite’s Annual went further: Grace was ‘generally admitted to be the most wonderful cricketer that ever handled a bat’. Young Fred was not far behind that summer, with five centuries to his name, including one score of 206.

      Such was W.G.’s dominance of the bowlers that his occasional failures were greeted with astonishment. The North v South fixture was resumed that year, though some diehard Northerners – Parr, Carpenter and Hayward – refused to participate. The teams played each other three times, once in the Canterbury Festival, and W.G. was unexpectedly bowled third ball by J.C. ‘Jemmy’ Shaw, the Nottinghamshire left-arm pace bowler. The Daily Telegraph commented: ‘Imagine Patti [the famous opera singer] singing outrageously out of tune; imagine Mr Gladstone violating all the rules of grammar – and you have a faint idea of the surprise created by this incident.’ The writer added that he fancied Mr Grace to take his revenge in the second innings, and the great man concurred. ‘I fancy I’ll do a little better this time,’ he said as he walked out to bat again and indeed he did, with a whirlwind 96 out of 134 in partnership with Jupp.

      The remark is evidence that the shy teenager of a few years earlier had matured into a self-confident young man. It was much the same story when MCC met Nottinghamshire. In the first innings W.G. was run out for 48 (still top score in an innings of 112) and was thoroughly outshone by the great Notts batsman Richard Daft, who scored an unbeaten 103. An essential element of W.G.’s make-up was his unrelenting competitiveness, whatever the standard of the match. He bet Daft that he would do better than him in his second innings and he was as good as his word. He thrashed a rapid 121, untypically offering several chances.

      The news of Grace’s exploits had naturally spread all over the country but there were few opportunities for cricket lovers in many areas to see him in action. His appearances at that time were reserved for a relatively few venues: club grounds around Bristol, where he was well known, Lord’s and The Oval in London, and a few county grounds in the south such as Canterbury and Hove. Gloucestershire were not yet part of the informal county championship, apart from that. The cricket season consisted of a motley collection of first-class fixtures: the MCC played the counties, the Gentlemen played the Players twice and sometimes more, the North played the South, Gentlemen of the South played Gentlemen of the North, and so on.

      At that stage of his career Grace rarely ventured out of the south or west. Thus the North v South fixture at Sheffield attracted great interest and a large crowd, for many of whom Grace was the chief attraction. (His Memorial Biography mistakenly described it as ‘his first appearance locally’, forgetting that he had captained the XVIII Youths of Nottingham and Sheffield there in 1866.) He did not let them down: opening the innings he rattled up 122 against a very strong attack. Charles Alcock later described it as ‘perhaps his most meritorious achievement’ of the season.

      I remember well, how, in the short space of two hours, against the bowling of Freeman, Emmett, Iddison and Wootton, he scored 122 runs on a wicket in every way suitable to the Northern bowling, and with George Freeman – then at his best – in such deadly form that no other Southern batsman could so much as look at him.

      The measure of W.G.’s superiority was that his ten team-mates contributed only 51. Then he took 6–57 when the North batted.

      Almost as great a performance came in the Gentlemen of the South v the Players of the South at that favourite hunting ground, The Oval, in mid-July. On a perfect pitch and in perfect weather the Players clocked up 475, batting through until after lunch on the second day of what was only a three-day match and W.G. had no more luck than anyone else with the ball. But the Players’ huge score proved to be no more than an aperitif for the main dish. W.G. opened with B.B. Cooper, who was to pop up in opposition to him in Australia a few years later. Less than four hours later they had put on 283 to break the first-class record for the first wicket, a record which stood until 1892. W.G.’s share was 180, Cooper’s 101. The Daily Telegraph’s observations provide a striking description of Grace in action at the crease:

      He has made even larger scores than the 180, but we doubt whether a better innings has ever been played by a cricketer past or present. The characteristic of Mr Grace’s play was that he knew exactly where every ball he hit would go. Just the strength required was expended and no more. When the fieldsmen were placed injudiciously too deep, he would quietly send a ball half-way towards them with a gentle tap and content himself with a modest single. If they came in a little nearer, the shoulders opened out and the powerful arms swung round as he lashed at the first loose ball and sent it away through the crowded ring of visitors until one heard a big thump as it struck against the farthest fence. Watching most other men – even good players – your main object is to see how they will defend themselves against the bowling; watching Mr Gilbert Grace, you can hardly help feeling as though the batsman himself were the assailant.

      The Gentlemen eventually totalled 553 all out and the match inevitably petered out in a draw.

      It was not success all the way for Grace that year. He took a Gloucestershire XI by train to play the boys of Marlborough College and on the way wagered that he would score a century and hit the ball into Sun Lane, a massive blow which had only ever been achieved once before. This was one bet that W.G. lost: he was bowled for only 6 by a boy named Kempe, who thus achieved what the cream of English cricket would have dearly loved to have done. The boy, a fast bowler, also dismissed the next batsman cheaply, who on returning to the pavilion remarked that he would have coped easily but for the bad light. To his great credit, Grace replied: ‘It was just the opposite with me. I could see it perfectly but I couldn’t play it.’

      To cap it, he attended evening service in the chapel, where ‘Sweet Saviour, Bless Us Ere We Go’ was sung. To the amusement of all, it contained the highly appropriate line:

      The scanty triumphs Grace hath won

      The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone.