Gilbert: The Last Years of WG Grace Read online

  ‘I was not going to speak of W.G. as batsman, bowler, fielder or captain but to tell you instead of the one thing which has struck me with pleasure all through the long years that I have been following cricket with devotion. More than once it has fallen to my lot to know of the kindly words that W.G. Grace has said to young cricketers. Those kindly words, to the schoolboy and the University cricketer, have never been forgotten, and have had a good deal to do with the successful career of those cricketers in the field afterwards. They recognised in Mr Grace large-heartedness, unselfishness and thought for others’ – at this Charles Kortright let out a snort – ‘and he will be remembered because he has elevated sport, because he played cricket as a sportsman’s genie, and has played from beginning to end courageously, honourably and straightforwardly’ – here Kortright had a small coughing fit – ‘and not simply to make a great many runs, but to make his side play the game as they ought to play it.

  ‘It is not only in cricket that he has made his mark. I well remember a performance of his that remains unique. After making 221 not out at cricket for the Gentlemen of England against Surrey at The Oval in the year 1866, W.G. went to the Crystal Palace and there in the evening won the quarter of a mile over twenty hurdles. That, gentlemen, is the calibre of sportsman we are celebrating here this evening.

  ‘We honour him here tonight because he is a large-hearted Englishman, because he consistently offers the hand of good fellowship to young and old and because he has elevated the national sport of county cricket to its present position.’

  He paused as applause and the banging of fists on tables filled the room.

  ‘One day, I suppose,’ he continued, ‘W.G. will grow old.’

  A rumble of denial went around the tables.

  ‘Despite this I hope that in forty or fifty years’ time he will be able to reflect on the fact that he has elevated a manly British sport, that he has played cricket honestly as a gentleman and a sportsman without thinking of himself’ – at this Kortright nearly bit clean through the stem of his pipe – ‘that he has set an example to many a younger man and earned the deserved admiration of the British nation. W.G. Grace is a manly, straightforward English sportsman.’

  Sir Richard raised his glass with a flourish and announced, ‘Gentlemen, I present to you a man of such renown that he is known best by his initials. W.G.!’

  There was a mass scraping of chairs from which emerged a wave of ‘W.G.’s in response, followed by a warm and lengthy round of applause.

  The Old Man let everyone settle back into their chairs before rising from his seat. Applause and cheering broke out again, this time showing no sign of abating until he was forced to raise his hand in an appeal for silence. Eventually, after what seemed like an age, the tumult died away to nothing and he looked around the room. He hated public speaking. Even after all these years he found it neither easier nor any less of a chore than it had been at the very beginning. Usually he favoured what he termed his ‘Canadian speech’, a short template he had developed on the MCC tour of the United States and Canada in 1872. ‘Gentlemen,’ he would begin, ‘I beg to thank you for the honour you have done me. I never saw better bowling than I have seen today and I hope to see as good wherever I go.’

  ‘Bowling’, he soon realised, could be switched easily with ‘batting’, ‘fielding’ or even, if he were feeling extra playful, ‘women’. Clearly, the Canadian speech would not have been appropriate on this occasion so he had prepared something a little more substantial, if still agreeably brief.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I cannot find the words to express my thanks for your reception tonight and the very kind way in which Sir Richard Webster has just spoken about me. You have truly done me the greatest honour I have ever experienced in my life. When I look around and see the friends and cricketers near me I wish I had my friend Stoddart’s happy knack of saying the right words in the right place. If it be that I cannot say the right words, then I certainly feel them.

  ‘As you know, I am a man of few words. When I am pleased those words might be all right, and when I am not they might be all wrong.’

  Once the laughter had died away, he continued.

  ‘I hope tonight, therefore, that they are right. Sir Richard Webster has said many kind words about me this evening that I do not deserve. In regard to his reference to the hurdle race at the Crystal Palace I feel I should point out that on the occasion to which he refers five started the race but only one finished, that being myself. That was a lucky one.’

  Again laughter washed over him.

  ‘As to cricket, Sir Richard Webster was perhaps not being entirely truthful when he said that I was always kind to young players. I remember an occasion some years ago when in a match at Lord’s for MCC against Surrey they brought up an unfortunate youngster who had taken a few wickets at a match the week before. His first ball I played quietly back to him, the second went over into the garden by the old armoury and the third followed suit. The fourth and fifth went into the pavilion and after that they never bowled the poor fellow again. I do not know whether that counts as being kind to young cricketers but I suspect it’s not what Sir Richard had in mind.’

  Again, laughter and applause filled the room.

  ‘I am very proud to be captain of the lot we have here this evening,’ he continued. ‘I have played on a good many wickets and know when they are a little bad. I can tell you that to score more than 300 runs on the wicket we have played on against such bowling as we saw today was better than any of us could have expected. Indeed, my old friend Stoddart and I thought we had done pretty well when we got to fifty.

  ‘The 300 wasn’t made by one man but by everybody and I must say that if we had won the toss the game would be very nearly over tonight.

  ‘In conclusion, I thank you again for your kind words and deeds on this, the occasion of my fiftieth birthday, and thank you from the very bottom of my heart for the kind way the toast has been both proposed and received.’

  He sat down, relieved the ordeal was over, with cheering and applause ringing in his ears that turned into a long standing ovation. He dabbed the sweat from his brow with his napkin, wiped the back of his neck, and when the ovation showed no sign of abating half rose from his chair and inclined his head.

  When the applause finally subsided he excused himself from the table and made his way outside for some fresh-air relief from the cigar- and pipe-smoke fug of the dining room. The contrast between the boisterous hullabaloo behind him and the quiet of St James’s Square was so great it made his ears ring. He looked across to the darkness of the square, crossed the street, walked to the gravelled octagon in the middle and took a seat on one of the cast-iron benches. He rubbed the back of his sore hand and flexed his fingers for a moment, then bowed his head, looked at the ground and breathed out expansively, enjoying the air and the peace.

  Fifty. A half-century. He had never been an introspective man but out here, on his own in the dark with his thoughts, away from the noise and the drunken chatter, he allowed himself a minor nostalgic indulgence. He’d always tried to avoid thinking about his own place in the scheme of things because if he permitted himself to embrace the gushing praise that had been heaped upon him from all sides for decades now it would not make for a healthy mind. He preferred to keep his thoughts simple, avoiding analysis. He worked on his instincts and, importantly, he trusted those instincts. They had, it was inarguable, served him very well.

  He’d certainly travelled far from those early days playing with his brothers in the field at Downend, with Uncle Pocock showing him how it was done, and his dear mother, always, in equal measure, her sons’ biggest supporter and critic, telling him exactly where he was going wrong.

  He thought back to the days when he was younger and slimmer. He surveyed the spread of his stomach. Curiously, he was a careful eater and moderate drinker, and heaven knows he got plenty of exercise, yet once he’d reached the full flush of adulthood his waistline had embarked on a non-sto
p course of expansion. Fortunately his strength, stamina and agility had prevented this from affecting his cricket, but now he’d reached 50 he was forced to recognise that old age was becoming a factor in his all-round game.

  It was mainly in the field that this was obvious. In fact it was only in the field that one could detect any visible evidence of the fast-ticking years beyond the grey flecks in his beard. These days he was far from the demon point fielder he once had been. He would still catch any chance that came to him, no matter how hard it fizzed through the air, but ground work was becoming more and more difficult. He thought back to the caught and bowled he’d taken at Leyton a few days earlier: he’d been so delighted to reach down and take the ball so close to his boots that he not given a thought to whether it was a clean catch or not. His instincts told him it was, and his instincts were what had fuelled all his successes on the cricket field. Either way, the catch was clean enough: the umpire wouldn’t have given it if he hadn’t been in strong agreement.

  In giving credence to the effects of time on his physique he went on to wonder what the future might hold. How much longer could he carry on playing before the years really began to catch up? The thing was, he still felt young; still felt the same keen anticipation for a game of cricket that he’d known as a youth, the same tingling excitement in his stomach, the same thrill when he was assailed by the smell of cut grass and linseed oil. Even the musty dampness and stale sweat of the average county dressing-room quickened his pulse as much today as it had back in the sixties.

  Enthusiasm was one thing, it was his own level of performance that mattered. Twelve wickets against Somersetshire and that 126 against Essex in the past week confirmed that he was still more than worthy of a place among the very best, but the dull, constant throbbing of his bruised heel and the sharp pains in his injured hand were increasingly persistent reminders, not that he needed them, of his own mortality.

  He raised his head, leaned back on the bench and looked up at the sky. It was a clear night with barely a cloud and he could see stars behind the stars as he looked deep into the night’s canopy. The universe was opening up before him and suddenly, for a moment, he was just a man with most of his life now behind him, suffering with a sore heel and sitting on a bench feeling very small indeed.

  Wednesday 20 July 1898

  Kortright walked to the wicket, his bat feeling heavy in his hands. He may have been one of the most feared fast bowlers in the country but as W.G. moved across to intercept him the Old Man could detect anxiety in his eyes. The Gentlemen had collapsed dramatically to 80 for nine with 45 minutes to play. No chance of winning the game but, as far as the Old Man was concerned, every chance of saving it. Jack Hearne’s reliable medium-pacers were rearing off a length but as long as the batsman got himself in line and played correctly there shouldn’t be much danger, even for a tailender like Kortright.

  The Players had been dismissed in their second innings for 263 on a wicket that was behaving much better than it had the previous day, Billy Gunn adding 56 to his magnificent first innings of 139 and Bill Storer top scoring with 73. W.G. had sat out the Players’ innings with his bruised heel and swollen hand and, with two and a half hours to play, a victory for the Gentlemen was all but out of the question and the match looked likely to end in a draw. However, Jack Hearne had torn through the Gentlemen’s early order leaving them 56 for six, the Middlesex man making the ball break on the drying wicket by anything up to nine inches. Having planned to sit out the innings on the grounds of his bruised heel and hand and the fact that the game could be saved without his assistance, the Champion had waited until the seventh wicket fell at 77 with an hour still to play before finally walking to the wicket. Dixon, at the other end, was bowled almost immediately and MacGregor followed three runs later (meaning that apart from Stoddart’s, the first to fall, every wicket in the innings had been clean bowled).

  The previous animosity with Kortright didn’t even enter Grace’s mind as he approached the wicket: there was a game to be saved along with the honour of the Gentlemen and that was all that mattered. They had exchanged a few cursory phrases while in the field where a level of contact between captain and strike bowler was essential, but now, in fading light, with three-quarters of an hour still to play, the two antagonists found themselves batting together to save the match. Grace was ready for the struggle: after all, this was his jubilee match and he had no intention of being on the losing side. In his mind it was down to how Kortright coped with the situation.

  The pair met at the edge of the square.

  ‘Don’t be nervous now, Korty,’ he said, ‘just play your natural game.’

  ‘All right, Doc,’ replied the Essex man, ‘I’ll do my best.’

  Kortright took guard, looked around the field and was ready. Hearne came in off his short, skippy run and with his smooth, classical action sent down a ball on a good length. Kortright played down the wrong line and the ball came within a whisker of clipping his off stump. The cry of the close fielders was followed to the middle a second later by the mass exhalation of the capacity Lord’s crowd. But he’d survived.

  His advice to Kortright may have sounded trite, patronising even, but it was sincere. In the Doctor’s mind there were few situations that called for anything else but playing one’s natural game. It’s what had served him best throughout his career and was entirely responsible for him being here, two days into his 51st year, at the wicket in front of a packed Lord’s crowd there for a match played in his honour. To him cricket, and batting in particular, was a simple game and he couldn’t fathom why people would wish to complicate it: all one had to do was treat each delivery as an individual entity and deal with it accordingly. The moment the ball left the bowler’s hand nothing else mattered beyond what happened when it arrived 20 yards down the wicket. In that instant the score was irrelevant, the identity of the bowler was irrelevant, the location was irrelevant. Once that ball was in flight all one had to do was watch it, establish where it would pitch and play a shot accordingly. That was all that mattered. The moment.

  Lockwood came charging in and sent down a fizzing delivery outside off stump. W.G. got himself in line, head over the ball and blocked it towards mid-off. The next delivery was identical, with the same outcome. The third was pitched up on the line of off stump. With scant movement of the feet, indeed, little movement of anything but those great meaty arms, the Doctor swung straight and through the ball. As soon as he made contact, however, the vibrations shimmering through his forearms told him the ball had not risen as much as he’d anticipated and hit a much lower part of the bat than he would have liked. He looked up to see it arcing through the azure blue of the sky and as he began lumbering through for the single, the soreness in his heel slowing him more than usual, he lowered his gaze to see Bobby Abel, his cap flying off as he ran towards the ball, arms out in front of him, in pursuit of the catch that would win the game.

  The Doctor concentrated on making good his ground rather than Abel closing in on the dropping ball. His eyes were fixed firmly on the crease as he lumbered towards completing the run and, as he’d suspected would happen, the gasp of the crowd told him the little Surrey man hadn’t quite made up the ground. He heard Abel’s apology, then the smack of the ball into Lockwood’s hands at the end of his run and someone call out, ‘Hard luck, Bobby!’

  The tension was palpable among the fielders and the crowd and only increased as the minutes ticked slowly by. Grace was immune to it, of course, and if Kortright was feeling the pressure the Old Man was pleased to note that he certainly wasn’t showing it, playing straight and clipping the occasional wide delivery through the covers to the boundary with increasing confidence. The pain in Grace’s heel meant he turned down more singles than he took and was soon outscored by his partner but, soreness aside, he still hobbled through for the odd run after hits into the deep as well as sending the occasional loose delivery fizzing to the boundary. Regardless of the situation, if a ball deserved to be hit then he
would always hit it.

  Eventually Arthur Shrewsbury grew desperate enough to throw the ball to Bill Storer, an occasional bowler charitably described as a leg-spinner. The clock was running down and the batsmen were well set: Grace had noted with satisfaction the jitteriness creeping into the fielding and how the chatter among them when he’d walked out to bat had long since ceased. The fielders were tenser than the batsmen and that was the way he liked it.

  As the clock ticked over to 6.30 the Old Man looked on approvingly as Kortright resisted an entire over of inviting long-hops from Storer, patting each of them gently back to the bowler, before putting his bat under his arm and beginning to trot lightly back towards the Pavilion.

  Grace’s eyes twinkled.

  ‘Not so fast, Korty, there’s half an hour yet,’ he said as the beaming Essex man approached him.

  ‘Six thirty finish, Doctor, surely?’ came the incredulous reply as Kortright’s smile fell from his face so quickly Grace almost heard it hit the ground.

  ‘Arthur and I agreed we’d play until seven if there was still a chance of a result,’ he said. ‘Back you go, just keep playing as you were and we shall have no trouble.’

  Kortright’s shoulders drooped slightly as he walked back to the crease. The Old Man had done it to him again, but at least this time he could see method in it. If he’d gone out knowing there was an hour and a quarter to play rather than 45 minutes he may not have lasted as long as he had. Another half-hour, then. So be it.