By Sumit Gangopadhyay

When I was very young, there were general knowledge books in Bengali medium schools. The name was We Will Know the World Now. There was always a question in the chapter on sports. 'Who is called the father of cricket?' The answer was 'WG Grace'.
I thought this was someone who played cricket for the first time. Later I realised that the matter was different.

That was in 1997.
When I read prolific writer Narayan Sanyal's Operation Bypass Surgery in the autumn issue of the Shukatara magazine, I came to know who WG Grace was. In the book, Professor Collins principal of Shibpur BE College said, “Between 1865 and 1895 Grace scored around 100 centuries in first-class cricket”.

I was stunned. 100 hundreds! Wow! Must have been a monster batsman!
In the same story, Narayan Sanyal claims that Professor Collins was the bowler to whose bowling Grace was given out when he told the umpire that terrible thing.
Later, after painstaking search, I read somewhere—I don't quite remember where— that the bowler was EWE Collins. I don’t have a clue whether he became the principal of BE College in later life.

The following year 18 July 1997 was a Saturday, just like today. The Princess Diana Memorial Match was being played at Lord's. The name of the trophy was WG Grace Trophy. Sachin Tendulkar made it memorable with a century. But it did not get his name on the honours board.
The next day, an article with Grace's picture appeared on the last page of a supplement to the Bartaman daily. For the first time I found out about Grace in detail. His 126 centuries, 2876 wickets, 54,896 runs etc. These were all based on dated calculations. I found out about 344, 318 and 839 in seven days. About the triple century at the age of 47 and ... about Arthur Conan Doyle playing cricket.

Anyway, the purpose of this piece is to bust a few myths and share some weird trivia about WG.

I wrote an article about Grace in my book and blog and titled it Legend. In it, I wrote that according to an oft-repeated tale, twice in his career Grace was out to JC Shaw for a duck in the first innings and got 200 in the second. However, in the 1134 matches played by Grace I uncovered in my searches till 2014 (including first-class and non first-class) I couldn't find these scores. Finally I got the scores today. In the last 8 years, scores of 48 more matches have been found. However, the two existing scorecards were there in 2012. They just escaped my notice.

From 31 July to 2 August 2 1870, in the Gentleman vs. Players match at the Oval, Grace was out to Shaw in both the innings. Once for a blob, and for 268 in the second innings. Shaw's bowling figures in this match were 29-16-39-1 and 51.1-12-109-5.

A few days later, on 14-16 August 1870, at the Royal Brunswick ground in Hove, Shaw dismissed Grace for a duck in the first innings. Shaw's bowling analysis read 43-20-72-7 in the first innings. The overs were four-ball. That means 28.4 six-ball overs. In the second innings, Shaw was given the stick. In 50 overs, (33.2 overs of today), he got 2 wickets for 127. Grace made 218 before falling to James Southerton, the only Test cricketer to be born in the Georgian era. Grace also captured 5 wickets in the first innings and 2 in the second.

Of the 1182 matches in first-class and other cricket where we do have the scorecards, Grace made 113 ducks. On four of these occasions he was out to Shaw.

Another story about Grace is that once he declared the innings when batting on 93 because he had every score from 0 to 99 under his name but had never scored 93. When I looked for it, I found 33 occasions in first-class and other cricket in which Grace was stuck in the 90s. He scored 93 three times, and two of them were innings in which he was dismissed. In 1900, playing for London County against Cambridge University and in 1903 playing for the same side against Lienstar. The second occasion was not a first-class encounter and the last score in the 90s by Grace.
However, the first time he scored 93 was when he declared the Gloucestershire innings against Sussex at Bristol, the match played from 1 to 3 August, 1898. It happened in the second innings. His elsest son was yet to bat. That was indeed the first time in his career that he scored 93,

In the match played between London County and Oundle Rovers from 31 July to 1st August, 1903, there was a strange entry on the scorecard. WG Grace c Robertson b WG Grace 55. How did it happen? WG Grace with both bat and ball?
Actually, batsman Grace was the person we are discussing. Bowler Grace was his eldest son, also named William Gilbert Grace. He took 11 wickets that day. He died two years later, at the age of 30.

Henry Jupp was Grace’s favourite bunny. WG got him 43 times. But whose bunny was Grace?

A Hill dismissed him 18 times, Fred Morley 20 times, Tom Richardson 21, JT Hearne 23, George Lohmann 23, Ted Attewell and James Southerton 29 each, Dick Barlow 30, JC Shaw 31 (including those zeroes and the double century), Tom Emmett 40, and Alfred Shaw on 48 occasions.

Happy Birthday Good Doctor. Continue to keep us and cricket history alive.

Translated from Bengali by Arunabha Sengupta