Cricket 1883

“ Together joined in cricket’s manly toil.”— B i j r o n . No. 37. VOL. 2. Registered for Transmission Abroad. THURSDAY, JULY 19, 1883. PRICE 2d. W . G. GRACE. ’Tis Grace indeed.— Winter’s Tale. I f it can be said of a sportsman as of a poet, that he is born—not made,the expression might fairly be applied to Mr. W. G. Grace, the greatest cricketer of this or any other age. William Gilbert Grace was born a cricketer if anyone ever was. He came of a parentage on both sides ardently attached to cricket and all its surroundings. His father was a keen supporter of the game, his brothers were all adepts at it, and it was to an uncle, Mr. Alfred Pocock, I believe, that he was indebted for most of his early instruction. His earliest associations and ideas must all have tended cricketwards, and, under such influences, it is not surprising that he soon began to show extraordinary pro­ ficiency at the game. He was born at , Downend, near Bristol, on July 18,1848, and he wanted still nine days to completo his ninth year when he made his debut for the West Gloucestershire Club against Bedminster, on Rodway Hill, Mangots- field. The Graces were even then a terror in the land, aud W. G. was not twelve years old when he made his mark for the first time, scoring 51 for West Gloucestershire v. Clifton, against the far from despicable! bowling of Messrs. Housin, A. M. Jones, Daubeny, Belcher, aud Homfray. Only four years more elapsed before he appeared for the first time on a Loudon ground, and his debut at Lord’s on July 21, 1864, for South Wales against M.C.C. and Ground, had been heralded a week before by two splendid scores of 170 and 56 not out for the South Wales team against the Gentle­ men of Sussex, at Brighton. This latter was an extraordinary performance for a boy not yet sixteen, but the year before he had scored thirty-two for a Twenty-two of Bristol against the All England Eleven, and to those who witnessed his play then his brilliant career has not been a surprise. His ability even at this period was phenomenal, and it may be cited as without a parallel that he was chosen to represent the Gentlemen against the Players, both at Lord’s and on the Surrey Ground, while he was not yet seventeen years of age. He figured in both the matches of 1865 against the Players, and though he made no sensational score it was in a great measure his excellent all­ round cricket, and that of his elder brother E. M., which contributed at Lord’s to the attainment of the first victory of the Gentle­ men since the year 1853, when Sir Frederick Bathurst and Mr. M. Kempson played havoc with the wickets of the Players. In the early part of 1866 he did comparatively little, but on July 30 he achieved'his first notable feat with the bat, and he was only a few days over his eighteenth birthday when he was credited with the extraordinary score of 224 for England against Surrey, at the Oval. On this occasion he was at tho wickets for nearly two days, and just a month later, at the same ground (the Oval) j he did another great performance, taking out I his bat for 173, made without a chance, for the Gentlemen of the South against the Players of j the South. An aggregate of 1,168 runs for an I average of 54 was the result of Mr. Grace’s bat­ ting for 1867, and from that time till the present year—I had almost said of Grace—he has stood out in bold relief as the finest cricketer of the age. In 1867 his appearances were comparatively few, and a combination of accidents — a sprained ankle, a severe attack of scarlet fever, and an injury to the forefinger of his right hand—deprived him of partici­ pation in some of the best matches of the year, notaoly that between the Gentlemen and Players at the Oval, the only occa­ sion, be it noted, for fifteen years, that he failed to help the Amateurs. In 1868 he was credited with 139 not out for tho Gentlemen against the Players, at Lord’s, and at Canterbury in the same year, for the South against the North, he scored 130 and 102 not out, on a ground which George Parr and others of the profes­ sional element had pronounced to be utterly unplayable. Space prevents us doing more than glancing briefly at Mr. Grace’s consistently wonderful perform­ ances during the last fourteen years. In 1869 he first became identified with the Marylebone Club, and his initial score for that society was 117 against Oxford. Eight other innings of over a hundred were credited to him, and it was in this year that he performed one of his greatest feats, with Mr. B. B. Cooper, scoring 283 for the first wicket of the Gentlemen against the Players of the South. For the Gentlemen against the Players, at the Oval, in 1870, he contributed 215 iu the second innings, and it was his score, in conjunction with Mr. W. B. Money’s 109 not out that mainly produced the huge total of 513 credited to the Gentlemen, the largest total ever scored in this match. His success in 1871 far outstripped any of his pre­ vious records, and this season his figures showed the unprecedented aggregate of 2,739 runs in first-class matches, or an average of 78. In the match for the South against the North, at the Oval, this year, the first time he went in he was