W. G. Grace
William Gilbert Grace was an English cricketer who is widely held to have been one of the sport's all-time greatest players. Always known by his initials as "W. G.", his first-class career spanned a record-equalling 44 seasons from 1865 to 1908. Test cricket originated during his career, and he represented England in 22 matches from 1880 to 1899. In domestic cricket, he was mostly associated with Gloucestershire, the Gentlemen, Marylebone Cricket Club, and the United South of England Eleven.
Right-handed as both batsman and bowler, Grace was an outstanding all-rounder who excelled at all the essential skills of batting, bowling, and fielding, though it is for his batting that he is most renowned, as he is held to have invented modern batsmanship. He dominated the sport during his career, and his technical innovations and enormous influence have left a lasting legacy. Usually opening the innings, he was particularly admired for his mastery of all strokes, and his level of expertise was said by contemporary reviewers to be unique. He generally captained the teams he played for at all levels because of his skill and tactical acumen.
Grace nominally held amateur status as a player, but he was said to have made more money from his cricketing activities than any contemporary professional. He was an extremely competitive player and, though he was one of the most famous men in England, he was also one of the most controversial on account of his gamesmanship and moneymaking.
He came from a cricketing family which included his elder brother Edward, and his younger brother Fred. In 1880, they were members of the same England team, the first time three brothers played together in a Test match. Grace took part in other sports—as a young man, he was a champion 440-yard hurdler, and played football for the Wanderers. In later life, he developed enthusiasm for golf, lawn bowls, and curling. He qualified as a medical practitioner in 1879.
Early years
Family
Grace was born in Downend, near Bristol, on 18 July 1848 at his parents' home, Downend House, and was baptised at the local church on 8 August. He was called Gilbert in the family circle, except by his mother, who apparently called him Willie, but otherwise, as "W. G.", he was universally known by his initials. His parents were Henry Mills Grace and Martha, who were married in Bristol on Thursday, 3 November 1831 and lived out their lives at Downend, where Henry Grace was the local GP. Downend is near Mangotsfield and, although it is now a suburb of Bristol, it was then a detached village surrounded by countryside, and about four miles from Bristol. Henry and Martha Grace had nine children in all. Biographer Simon Rae commented that this was "the same number as Victoria and Albert—and in every respect they were the typical Victorian family". Grace was the eighth child in the family; he had three older brothers, including Edward, and four older sisters. The ninth child was his younger brother Fred, born in 1850.Education
Grace was "notoriously unscholarly". His first schooling was with a Miss Trotman in Downend village and then with a Mr Curtis of Winterbourne. He subsequently attended a day school called Ridgway House, run by a Mr Malpas, until he was fourteen. One of his schoolmasters, David Bernard, later married Grace's sister Alice. In 1863, Grace was taken seriously ill with pneumonia, and his father removed him from Ridgway House. After this illness, Grace grew rapidly to his full height of 6 ft 2 in. He continued his education at home, where one of his tutors was the Reverend John Dann, the Downend parish church curate; like Mr Bernard before him, Mr Dann became Grace's brother-in-law, marrying Blanche Grace in 1869.Grace never went to university, because his father wanted him to pursue a medical career. Nevertheless, Grace received approaches from both Oxford University Cricket Club and Cambridge University Cricket Club. In 1866, when he played a match at Oxford, one of the Oxford players, Edmund Carter, tried to interest him in becoming an undergraduate. Then, in 1868, Grace received overtures from Caius College, Cambridge, which had a long medical tradition. Grace said he would have gone to either Oxford or Cambridge if his father had allowed it. Instead, he enrolled at Bristol Medical School in October 1868, when he was 20.
Grace's entire life, including his cricket and medical careers, is inseparable from his close-knit family background, which was strongly influenced by his father, who set great store by qualifications and determination to succeed. Henry, whose medical qualifications were Licenciate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1828 and Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1830, passed this purposeful attitude on to each of his five sons. Therefore, like his father and his brothers, Grace chose a professional career in medicine. Because of his cricketing commitments, however, he did not complete his qualification as a doctor until 1879, when he was 31 years old.
Development as a cricketer
Grace began his Cricketing Reminiscences by answering a question he had frequently been asked—"was he born a cricketer"? His answer was in the negative because he believed that "cricketers are made by coaching and practice", though he added that if he was not born a cricketer, he was born "in the atmosphere of cricket". His father and mother were "full of enthusiasm for the game" and it was "a common theme of conversation at home". In 1850, when W. G. was two and Fred was expected, the family moved to a nearby house called "The Chesnuts", which had a sizeable orchard, and Henry Grace organised clearance of this to establish a practice pitch. All nine children in the Grace family, including the four daughters, were encouraged to play cricket; however, the girls, along with the dogs, were required for fielding only. Grace claimed that he first handled a cricket bat at the age of two.It was in the Downend orchard and as members of their local cricket clubs that he and his brothers developed their skills, mainly under the tutelage of their uncle, Alfred Pocock, who spent long hours coaching them at Downend. E. M., who was seven years older than W. G., had always played with a full-size bat and so developed a tendency, that he never lost, to hit across the line, the bat being too big for him to "play straight". Pocock recognised this problem and determined that W. G. and Fred should not follow suit. He therefore fashioned smaller bats for them, to suit their sizes, and they were taught to play straight and "learn defence, with the left shoulder well forward", before attempting to hit. Apart from his cricket and his schooling, Grace lived the life of a country boy and roamed freely with the other village boys. One of his regular activities was stone throwing at birds in the fields and he later claimed that this was the source of his eventual skill as an outfielder.
Henry Grace founded Mangotsfield Cricket Club in 1845 to represent several neighbouring villages including Downend. In 1846, this club merged with the West Gloucestershire Cricket Club whose name was adopted until 1867; it has been said that the Grace family ran the West Gloucestershire "almost as a private club". Henry Grace managed to organise matches against Lansdown Cricket Club in Bath, which was the premier West Country club. West Gloucestershire fared poorly in these games and, sometime in the 1850s, Henry Grace and Alfred Pocock decided to join Lansdown, although they continued to run the West Gloucestershire and this remained their primary club.
Grace recorded in his Reminiscences that he saw his first "great" cricket match in 1854 when he was barely six years old, the occasion being a game between the All England Eleven and twenty-two of West Gloucestershire. He first played for the West Gloucestershire club himself as early as 1857, when he was nine years old, and he had eleven innings in 1859. The first time he made a substantial score was in July 1860 when he scored 51 for West Gloucestershire against Clifton—forty years later, he said no innings ever gave him more pleasure.
It was through Grace's elder brother EM, however, that the family name first became famous. Their mother, Martha, wrote the following in a letter to William Clarke's successor George Parr in 1860 or 1861:
I am writing to ask you to consider the inclusion of my son, E. M. Grace—a splendid hitter and most excellent catch—in your England Eleven. I am sure he would play very well and do the team much credit. It may interest you to learn that I have another son, now twelve years of age, who will in time be a much better player than his brother because his back stroke is sounder, and he always plays with a straight bat.
Grace was just short of his thirteenth birthday when, on 5 July 1861, he made his debut for Lansdown and played two matches that month. EM had made his debut in 1857, aged sixteen. In August 1862, aged 14, Grace played for West Gloucestershire against a Devonshire team. A year later, following the bout of pneumonia which had left him bed-ridden for several weeks, he scored 52 not out and took five wickets to help Gentlemen of Gloucestershire defeat Gentlemen of Somerset by 87 runs at the Sydenham Field ground in Bath. Soon afterwards, he was one of four family members who played for a Bristol and Didcot XVIII against the All England Eleven. He scored 32 off the bowling of John Jackson, George Tarrant, Cris Tinley, and Ned Willsher—before Tinley bowled him. EM took ten wickets in the match, which Bristol and Didcot won by an innings, and as a result EM was invited to tour Australia a few months later with George Parr's England team.
EM did not return from Australia until July 1864 and his absence presented Grace with an opportunity to appear on cricket's greatest stages. He and his elder brother Henry were invited to play for the South Wales team which had arranged a series of matches in London and Sussex, though Grace wondered humorously how they were qualified to represent South Wales. It was the first time that Grace left the West Country and he made his debut appearances at both The Oval and Lord's.
Besides his cricketing skills, Grace was an outstanding athlete as a young man and took part in several meetings. He threw a cricket ball during a field event at Eastbourne. He won the hurdling title at the National Olympian Games at Crystal Palace in August 1866, and claimed the silver medal in the quarter-mile event at the 1869 AAC Championships. Also, Grace is known to have played football for the Wanderers, although he did not feature in any of their FA Cup–winning teams.