by Arunabha Sengupta
A legend even in the elite club which allows only sublime, hallowed names.
During his days only the Queen, and arguably William Gladstone, were more readily recognisable to the common Englishman. Trains used to be held up as people scurried to shake the great, huge ham of a hand.
Then there was the beard. Even in those days when facial hair sprouted luxuriant and lavish, WG was miles ahead in texture and density—often resembling The Creator of the Old Testament. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail the face of God that speaks stirringly to the knights is the animated image of WG. It could not have been more apt.
On cricket grounds, often notices announced: “Admission threepence. If Dr WG Grace plays admission sixpence.”
He was the first to master both forward and back play, hits towards off and leg, was a synthesis of all styles seen in cricket till then. It was said that he turned the old one-stringed instrument into a many-chorded lyre.
WG topped 1,000 runs in 28 seasons, 2,000 in five. Between 1868 and 1877, he was twice as good as the next best. No other cricketer other than Don Bradman managed as big a gap with his peers.
He thrived through the 1880s and, even after his middle-age spread, enjoyed an Indian summer in 1895 at the age of 47.
Grace hit 152 on Test debut in 1880. Till 1899, an England XI without him was unthinkable. He scored his final First-Class hundred just after his 56th birthday.
He also captured more than 100 wickets nine times, starting with round-arm fast-medium and moving on to looping slows. In his youth an excellent outfielder, in later years he specialised at point—if only to chatter at the batsman.
A master of gamesmanship, he tried every trick in the game to snatch a win. And often he made more money than all the rest of the players put together — while masquerading as an amateur.
And all this while, he made his living as a general practitioner.
Did Grace really replace the bails and carry on batting after being bowled?
Did he really call out ‘The Lady’ during the toss?
The facts are too inseparably fused with apocrypha.
Many stories are shared with the disclaimer, “Just the sort of thing the Old Man would have said.”
But some are nonetheless memorable.
Such as the patient poking his head in the surgery door, asking “Is Dr Grace in?” and the answer floating back, “Of course he’s in. He’s been batting ever since lunch-time on Tuesday.”
Or when the drunken sweep stinking of beer demanded a tonic. WG responded, “What you need lad is exercise and not medicine.” Following this, he called out to his maid, “Mary, fetch my boxing gloves.” The patient rushed out, completely cured, screaming, “The great big b***** wants to fight me!”
It seems once he was was awakened in the middle of the night by a loud thud and a yell of agony. A tramp had sought to raid the larder and had met with the misfortune of being trapped with the heavy window sash falling on his hands. Medical etiquette demanded WG dress his wounds. He did that. But hand him over to the police? “Oh no, not my patient. I just went round and gave him a running kick and let him go.”
And then there was the servant girl who went to London to visit Madame Tussaud’s. When Grace asked her, “Mary, did you see me there?” the reply was, “Oh no sir, we’d have to pay sixpence extra to go into the Chamber of Horrors.”
And some stories are genuine.
Such as the doctor walking great distances to visit patients in the wide expanses of the county.
Often a family short of fuel or food would find the doctor producing a bag of coal or a basin of soup.
Sometimes WG would also bully and browbeat some friends into giving the unemployed men of the locality some sort of jobs.
And if the smell of brewing soup enticed him, WG often stayed back in the patient s house, joining the family for dinner.
When Joe Hadow made a running catch at deep square leg to dismiss WG and stumbled forward to hit his head against the projecting metal edge of a stand, the Doctor, on his way back to the pavilion, administered first aid with more gentle firmness than expected for someone who had made a catch of a genuine six hit.
Once WG saved the life of old Gloucestershire cricketer and cricket writer ACM Croome after he had gashed his throat against one of the spiked railings in front of the pavilion of Old Trafford. The cut was deep and potentially fatal. WG held the jagged edges of the wound together for nearly half an hour as messengers scurried to find surgical needles. Hee did that after bowling all day.
When the famous Australian bowler Charlie Turner dislocated his finger while batting during a Test match, WG moved in from his fielding position and set it with professional precision.
Yes, he used to control umpires with his fierce gaze and nonchalant flouting of laws. After a series of appeals turned down, mostly due to powerful stares of WG over his domineering beard, fast bowler Charles Kortright knocked the middle and off stumps down with a vicious yorker. As the great man turned to leave, the bowler said: “Surely you’re not going Doctor, there’s one stump still standing.”
But he was a fantastic cricketer who would have found a way to score even if the umpires had been dead against him.
Tom Emmett is supposed to have said, “He ought to have a littler bat”
And later, subjected to relentless run-making, he had added, “It’s Grace before meat, Grace after meat, Grace all day, and I reckon it’ll be Grace tomorrow.”
And further down the line, “The better I places ’em, the better he pastes ’em.”
According to GK Chesterton: “WG, the bulky sprite, was a prodigious Puck in a truly English midsummer day’s dream.”
The Great Cricketer was born on 18 July 1848