"W. G."
A SIMPLE, unpretending record of a generation of cricket by the greatest exponent of the game that the world has ever known is bound to interest a great multitude of readers. What a pity it is that it is only in these latter days that these arts have become, so to speak, articulate ! We would exchange a good deal of what antiquity has left us for the reminiscences of Dorieus, the great athlete of Rhodes, whose splendid reputation and majestic presence moved the Athenian Assembly to forget his lifelong enmity to their
° Reviewed In the Spectator of September 23rd, 1893.
"117. Cricizeting Reminiscences and Personal Recollections. By W. G. Grace. Luudou .1.1.wes Luwden. [ea]
sity. Posterity will not have any such blanks in our litera- ture to mourn over. The danger rather is that the literature of athletics will become too abundant. But a writer who has so much to tell as Mr. Grace, and can tell it so well, cannot but be welcome.
"I have frequently been asked "—so he begins his " Early Recollections "—" if I was born a cricketer," and he goes on, after the manner of successful artists, to magnify the virtues of teaching, practice, and diligence generally. He does not, indeed, attempt to deny the influence of heredity; facts are too strong to allow it; his own name, and the names of Walker, Lyttelton, Studd, and Steel, to mention a few out of many that occur to one, prove that the natural gift goes for much. Possibly one form of this gift is the capacity for taking pains; which, indeed, has been boldly pronounced to be the essence of genius. Nothing, however, is more certain than that in all activities, whether of mind or of body, there is a well-defined limit for every individual which no diligence will enable him to pass. Mr. Grace, in fact, gives us a hint of what the physical gift which goes to make excellence in at least one department of the game may be. He begins by allowing something for luck. The very best of batsmen has to be indebted to this at the beginning of his innings. If the first ball that he receives is a superlatively good one, it is almost sure to be too much for him. But if these early dangers are escaped, then there comes an experience which we have often heard verbally described, but do not remember to have seen before in print,—anyhow, with such fullness of detail:—
" When the batsman has got through this stage of his innings, a change comes over him. The ball seems to expand until it appears to him to be the size of a football. He can watch its career through the air after it has left the bowler's hand with perfect ease, and time it with precision. Indeed he feels in capable of missing it. Whether this is a mental or optical illusion I cannot decide, but it is the experience of all cricketers when 'set.' It is certainly not a matter of confidence, as a bats- man may play a most brilliant innings when he feels far from confident. Once thoroughly 'set' the apparent expansion of the size of the ball continues almost indefinitely. It remains un- broken by intervals, say for luncheon or adjournments for the night, and a batsman may go from one ground to another and still find his eye in.' A change in the weather, with its conse- quent effect on the wicket, almost invariably breaks the spell. During the early part of this season (1895) I kept my ' eye in' for several weeks, and scarcely ever failed to score heavily. But when the rain came and damaged the wickets I was master of the situation no longer."
Now this seems to us distinctly a gift; the most diligent practice will not acquire it. There are cricketers to whom the experience is quite unknown, but these are bound not to excel at least in batting. Why then, it may be asked, does a good batsman ever go off? Because advancing years diminish the rapidity of the connection between the will and the hand. He has the experience of the enlarged ball as fully as ever, but the power of action following instanta- neously on volition is gone. Mr. Grace has kept it for an extra- ordinarily long time. He played for the first time at the Oval and at Lords in 1864. Two years afterwards he was at the top of the batting averages, with 4210. The next year he was not higher than sixth; but in 1868 he rose again to the highest place with an average of 65'3, and this highest place he kept without interruption for six more years. In 1875 he was
seventh (though his total of runs was several hundreds more than the next highest scorer, 1,498 to 976). Then came four
more first places (1876-1880), with the exception of 1878, when he was bracketed second. But the most remarkable achieve- ment remains to be told. In 1895, the thirtieth year after his first appearance in the Metropolitan cricket-grounds, be stood second on the list with Si, being only half a ran behind the first, and nearly doubling the first's total, 2,346 to 1,229. He has held the primacy twelve times ; the next most successful batsman (Shrewsbury) has held it five times, W. W. Read has held it thrice, and Gunn twice ; no other batsman has been at the top more than once. He has also held the second place Eve times, no other " first " having had it more than twice, W. G.'s " great year was 1876. In the August of that year he made 1,389 runs, a number which no other batsman equalled during the whole season. Twenty years afterwards he scored 1,000 runs in the last twenty-one days of May. These instances of his extraordinary skill might be multiplied indefinitely, but the most notable proof of it may be found in the change which his appearance on the cricket field brought in the fortunes of the great match of Gentlemen v. Players. This had been
almost a certainty for the professionals. All kinds of devices had been tried, and tried in vain, to equalise the sides. The Gentlemen had played with smaller wickets, with more men, and with bowlers given. For eleven years, 1854-1864, not to go back to earlier times, the game being played on equal terms, the Players had won. In 1865, Mr. Grace played with the Gentlemen for the first time, and they won. Beaten the next year—we take account of the Lord's match only— they won in 1867, and in thirty-one years reckoned seventeen victories against nine defeats, five matches being drawn. Mr. Grace's achievements as a bowler have been not incon- siderable. Nine times he has taken more than a hundred wickets in the season ; twice he has headed the list of bowlers as far as the number of wickets was concerned, though be has never achieved the lowest average of runs per wicket.
Our author has been bound to make himself in a way the hero of his book. This could not have been helped, but he is never other than modest, and he evidently delights in doing full justice to colleagues and rivals. He has some excellent advice to give—his words of wisdom addressed to fielders being particularly valuable—and not a few oddities of chance and conduct among his recollections. He has seen a player caught off a ball that had been called "wide," given "not out" by the umpire, and afterwards scoring more than a hundred runs. Once the ball lodged in his shirt. He had already run three and ran three more with this fixture. The cricket laws of the time provided no means for getting it away; now it is ruled to be "dead." He has seen a player of the " stone-wall " order take two hours and a half to score five, and, on another occasion, leave the wicket with a " duck " after an innings of an hour and twenty minutes. The legend of this player's introduction to first-class cricket is that a gentleman compelled to wait at a rail- way-station in Lancashire was invited to join the officials in a game of cricket. "Have a bowl at our porter," said the stationmaster, "he has been batting for six weeks, and we can't get him out." Another marvel is the " skier " for which three runs was made before the ball came down into the wicket-keeper's hands, and Blipped through them. Nor are there wanting occasional strokes of humour. We read of a bowler who, having seen catch after catch missed in the field, threw down the ball and declared that he would go off. "There's an epidemic on the ground," he cried, "but, thank God, it isn't catchin'." Then there was a player who went into a shop where cricket requisites were sold, and asked for arnica, sticking-plaster, and a sling for the arm,—" he was going to play," he explained, "against Crossland," the famous Lancashire fast bowler. The fast bowling of that day was made deadly by the roughness of the ground. On the billiard-table turf of the present it is nothing like so for- midable, though it is probably more effective on the whole than either the medium pace or the slow. But it wears out the bowler, whose fioruit is commonly short. The first Lilly- white, who was a slow bowler, played, it will be remembered, when he was sixty-three.
The illustrations of the book are plentiful and good. Why is it necessary to separate them from the subjects which they illustrate
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