W. G. Grace was a cricketing colossus who bestrode the sporting world. In his pomp he was the most famous and recognisable man in Victorian society. Of course his beard helped, a veritable hedgerow it was, a resplendent and generous growth even by the standards of his time. It helped, too, that he was a doctor with a reputation for helping the poorer elements. And it helped that he had the constitution of an ox and could drink until dawn or travel all night in a rickety old carriage in the rough roads of his age, and still rise the next morning with a twinkle in his eye and a hundred in his bat. He was the game’s first and greatest champion.
Most of all though, W. G. – and he was, universally, W. G. – owed his incomparable eminence in the game to the astonishing amount of runs he scored and wickets he took in a long and formidable career. Sportsmen are supposed to fade after 10 years, 20 at most. After 40 years, W. G. was still going strong. Throughout he maintained his buoyant athleticism; the song in his heart never fell silent. Longevity has its part to play.
No cricketer, not even Bradman or Sobers, has been as dominant. None, not even Sunil or Ian, spread the game so far. Gavaskar took it into the valleys and fields of India; Botham took it into the pubs. W. G. took the game everywhere, turned it from an occasional and sometimes disreputable past into the international affair of experience.
At the onset of his 40 years the game played a small part in the affairs of state. By the end, the game was played in back streets and upon village greens, was debated in parliament and followed closely in newspapers.
His record speaks for itself, a mountain ofruns, a pile ofwickets. Those runs were scored upon the bumpy pitches of the era. Those Victorians were a tough lot. Not for them howls when a ball thudded into their ribs. It was a bruising game, particularly once the bowlers went from underarm to roundarm and, finally, to overarm. Only later were heavy rollers introduced and the pitches flattened.
Nor were the bowlers a servile lot, especially the Australians who possessed, in Fred Spofforth, a man with terror in his eyes, and ferocity in his limbs. The contest between Grace and Spofforth echoed down ages.
Characteristically, Grace also bowled a good deal, a little too much in the opinion of some colleagues. As captain, his chief strategy was to remove himself from the attack only as a last resort, whereupon he tried his luck at the other end. In those days, gentlemen seldom bowled a great deal but Grace was above all that. Later in life he is pictured as a bear of a man; in his youth he was superbly athletic. At first he relied upon pace, later he put cunning to use. Nor did he neglect sharp practice or raucous appeal, reasoning that the umpire alone could judge such matters. And most of the umpires were in his pocket, or thought to be.
W. G. had a huge following across the country. The growth of newspapers and trains saw to that. Children gasped at his achievements. In his late 40’s, his best days supposedly far behind, he suddenly roused himself to play a series of stunning innings, scoring centuries and double centuries in a fortnight and travelling long distances between times. He was cricket personified. Only Sobers had as much feel for the game, only Sobers had as much talent.
Last year the 150th anniversary of W. G. was celebrated across an England suffering from rain and defeat. At his death, followers of the game asked “when comes such another?”. He took the game from the wildness of his Georgian youth to the respectability and fame of its Victorian maturity.
Now cricket has need of another champion, a player to rise above the tyranny of pettiness, the idle practices that sometimes creep in; a man to set the game on its proper footing; ancient and modern and the best of each. Perhaps the cricketer has appeared and we have not taken sufficient notice. Not so long ago Sachin Tendulkar was described by Steve Waugh, himself no mug, as “second only to The Don amongst batsmen” . More recently still, Tendulkar graced Lord’s with a wonderful century in a memorial match involving most of the world’s great players. He, too, is a colossus, the cricketer of a generation. In time we may reflect upon these times and, for all their irritation, reflect that they weren’t so bad after all, with their Warnes and Akrams and De Silvas and Ambroses and so forth. Let not the past be denied its glories and lapses; let not only its excesses be remembered when thoughts turn to the current dispensation.