Chapter Nine WG in Holiday Mood For all the burgeoning ferocity of the Roses encounters and the Trent Bridge-Oval duels, WG Grace remained the principal attraction of the early Golden Age holiday games. He had come early to such matches, as far back as 1867 when he played for England against Middlesex for the benefit of the Marylebone Professionals’ Fund, the subsequent South-North fixtures for the same cause at Lord’s and his deeds during Canterbury Week. As county cricket expanded, WG’s holiday appearances were made on behalf of Gloucestershire, who undertook traditional fixtures with Sussex. It was not long before the Whitsuntide crowds were royally entertained. At Hove in 1888, 1,117 runs were scored in three days, the match being drawn. By the end of Whit Monday – the first day – Gloucestershire were 361 for six withWG, who had gone in first, 188 not out. “There was a large crowd on the ground, the weather being beautifully fine, and the wicket was in that almost perfect condition in which we generally see the turf at Hove,” said Wisden . On the second day Grace carried his score to 215 before hitting his own wicket playing at a lob from Walter Humphreys. “He had been in nearly seven hours,” reported The Times , “and there was no falling-off from the masterly batting for which he is so famous, while he exhibited quite his old self in placing the ball.” He was now almost 40 and it was the eighth double century of his career. It was merely the prelude. A string of half-centuries followed in the matches and some useful bowling, too, although he was the junior partner in an innings victory at Ashley Down in 1889 when Bill Woof’s left-arm spin exploited a helpful pitch. In 1894 his average declined to 29 before another of those remarkable summers which gave the lie to fears that the Old Man’s skills had deserted him. He might have felt he owed the Bristol crowd a performance. August Bank Holiday 1894 had been wet and the announcement that no play would be possible was made at 3pm. WG organised an impromptu football match on the practice ground but the spectators were in no mood to be placated and demanded their money back. Haughty behaviour by CB Fry did not help and some of the players were jostled as they left the ground. Fry rubbed salt into the wound by making a century next day, Fred Parris’s off breaks and clever variations of pace claiming 15-98 in the day, including the wicket of Grace twice. Sussex won that game by an innings and Parris followed it with five for 14 (20 Gloucestershire wickets for 112 in three consecutive innings) before a Whit Monday crowd of 10,000 at Hove in 1895. Grace, his thousand runs in May and his 100th hundred already banked, scored 91 in the first innings but Sussex again won comfortably. Gloucestershire broke the spell after a blank August Bank Holiday Monday, when the 18-year-old Charles Townsend, then in the midst of a purple patch, spun Sussex to defeat with his leg breaks. Victory was sweet but Grace exacted full vengeance in 1896. During the Whitsuntide game at Hove he made 243 not out (226 on Monday), hitting 33 39