Knocked for six by his demons
Next month, it will be a hundred years since W. G. Grace died. But those of us who follow cricket with an enthusiasm that verges on mental illness are still fascinated by the old goat.
Was he as good a player as everyone said he was? Was he as much of a monster? What was the real story?
the legends that surround this remarkable sporting figure have all but obliterated the real person who lurked beneath.
We know of the beard. We know of the hundred first-class centuries, of the arrogance, of the avarice, of the sheer physical dominance of the man. No one was more famous in Victorian england. He was the proto-celebrity.
It’ s therefore a pleasure to r ead a biography as thoughtful and assiduous as Richard tomlinson’s. As well as reassessing Grace, whom he thinks has long been hard done by, he’s worked hard to distinguish between stories we are told and what actually happened.
For instance, I knew that Grace had died after suffering a stroke in his South London garden, reportedly shaking his fist at German Zeppelins overhead. tomlinson doesn’t mention the Zeppelins — it’s an urban myth.
He does mention that the Surrey amateur Henry Leveson Gower says in his autobiography 40 years later that he went to visit the stricken Grace and found him cowering under the bed from the Zeppelins. tomlinson doesn’t believe that, either.
(Incidentally, Leveson Gower was so upperclass there’s almost no one left alive who knows how his name was pronounced. It’s ‘Loos on Gore’.)
there is a famous tale — so familiar that many cricket fans can repeat it verbatim — of Grace being dismissed by a bowler and refusing to leave the crease, saying something along the lines of: ‘they haven’t come to see you bowl, they’ve come to see me bat.’
You’ll search hard and in vain for it in this book. In fact, tomlinson explains in his afterword that he could not verify it and suspects it was made up.
What’s in no doubt is Grace’s preeminence as a cricketer at his peak. By the age of 27 he had scored 50 first- class centuries. this was despite a difficult start to his career, when he could barely get a game.
In the 1870s, you could play only for the county of your birth, but Gloucestershire did not then have a first-class cricket team, so Grace’s only option was to play for the ‘national’ Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) as an amateur.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t posh enough for them. He was of what we would now consider to be the impoverished middle-classes. the MCC delayed his membership until four years after his first-class debut, when it had become apparent t hat he might be the best batsman in the world. this is no idle claim. In the 1870s, he made as many centuries as the next 13 best batsmen put together. Cricket pitches weren’t as they are today, beautifully tended surfaces that make bowling greens look bumpy. the pitch at Lord’s had stones in it.
‘It was not until Don Bradman in the thirties that another batsman achieved W. G.’s towering superiority; and Bradman scored most of his runs on good pitches for batting.
‘even today, the young W. G. still seems the only batsman worth even discussing as comparable to “the Don”.’
In england, Grace played as an amateur, which covered expenses only. But he had no money, and was useless with it when he got hold of some, so his ‘expenses’ grew larger and larger, to the point where the word ‘ shamateur’ was coined to describe him. It was all utter hypocrisy, of course. Cricket clubs would make a fortune whenever he was playing, because his mere presence put thousands on the gate.
BUt because he was a ‘ gentleman’, i t was deemed bad form for him to share in any of this. then, in his late 20s, he started putting on weight. While this made him an ever more imposing figure at the crease, it also eroded his talent.
He played first- class cricket for another 20 years, but never dominated in the same way again.
‘W. G. at the table was not a merry, Falstaffian giant. Grabbing the next bottle, or sawing off a hunk of cold beef, he came across as a man seeking release in food and drink from considerable internal stress.’
Although he loved cricket to the very core of his being, I’m not sure it ever quite loved him back enough.
this is, at heart, a sad book. Nowadays, someone like Grace would have managers and nutritionists and coaches to help him make the most of his talent.
But he was on his own. He was, in truth, wilful, snobbish, occasionally obtuse and, like all great batsmen, selfish in the extreme.
But tomlinson clearly likes him as well as revering him, and so did I after finishing this lovingly crafted piece of work.