 "Grace playing a defensive block in 1897")
GILBERT: THE LAST YEARS OF W G GRACE
Author: Charlie Connelly
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 190
Price: Rs 499
August 29, 1882: William Gilbert Grace strode out to bat like he always did. The awkward gait, the immense beard, the bat he so often wielded like a toothpick tucked tightly under his left arm. His captain, A G Hornby, walked alongside him. The afternoon London sun was at its best, scattering its warmth all across the old wooden stands at The Oval, which was brimming with expectant spectators.
On any other day, Grace, still only 34 years old, would have knocked off the 85 runs set for victory by Australia all on his own. But this had been a somewhat whirlwind Test match. For a day and a half, it had oscillated rapidly between the two teams, and now Grace had the opportunity to settle it in England's favour. On a difficult wicket, Grace fought doggedly, grinding his way to a lacklustre 32. But just as the hosts looked set for victory, Grace fell to Harry Boyle. England surrendered abjectly soon after, falling short of the target by seven runs. Two days later, a satirical obituary bemoaning the "death"of England cricket in The Sporting Times, a sports weekly at the time, gave birth to The Ashes.
In the hullabaloo that followed, cricket fans across England maintained that it was Grace's premature fall at The Oval that had pushed their team towards the impending disaster. "Had Grace been there at the end, England would have won it," was the chorus that rang out loud in English cricketing circles. For once, Grace's stupefying ability had betrayed him.
This perfectly summed up the gargantuan impact he had on the game in England. After the Industrial Revolution, cricket was the apotheosis of everything English and Grace was its towering symbol. He was a cricket colossus who reformed the sport in unimaginable ways. As C L R James puts it in Beyond a Boundary, "Bradman piled up centuries, W G built a social organization."
Grace playing a defensive block in 1897
In his time, Grace was not only the greatest batsman that the world had ever seen. He was a more than formidable medium-pace bowler who often outshone his more illustrious bowling peers. While fielding at point, despite the astounding girth, Grace would seldom let anything go past him. Seeing The Doctor put down a catch was almost akin to spotting a polar bear in the Atacama desert. Such was his presence that a bishop once wrote that had Grace been around when the Illiad was written, the epic would have turned out very differently.
His personality, much like his cricket, was also multi-faceted. For some, he was a cricketing god. For others, he was a brazen cheat who flagrantly used his imposing influence to make decisions go his way. In one of the earlier chapters in the book, Connelly writes about how Grace, playing for Gloucestershire , invited the wrath of Charlie Kortright, a feisty fast bowler from Essex, in a county game in July 1898. Grace had been given out after what Kortright claimed was a clean caught and bowled. Adamant that the ball had hit the ground before carrying, Grace vociferously protested. The umpire, under the The Doctor's frightful gaze, hastily overturned the decision.
However, Grace, at his core, remained a gentle giant who knew how to get the best out of his players. In a game between the Gentlemen and the Players that same year, Grace and Kortright played on the same team. In spite of all the antipathy between the two, Connelly vividly describes how Grace inspired Kortright to valiantly thwart a bowling onslaught by the Players; with the duo's last wicket stand almost saving a match that seemed lost an eternity ago.
Grace, Connelly writes, felt "absolutely nothing" after reaching his 100th hundred against Somerset in 1895, despite his first biographer's best attempts to coax him into saying something a little more substantial; something that would give the book more depth. For Grace, cricket was an obsession; a driving passion that had become both magical and mundane in equal measure during the last few years of his career.
Beyond the bagful of runs and centuries, Connelly portrays Grace as a loving father who was left devastated after the death of his daughter, Bessie, in 1899. In her, he saw a lot of himself: the infectious laughter, the twinkling eyes, the amateurish enthusiasm. Connelly captures his grief succinctly, giving the reader a glimpse into the palpable hollowness that led to his own death 16 years later. The death of Billy Murdoch in 1911, the former Australian captain and Grace's best friend, Connelly says, in a lot of ways, was the beginning of the end for Grace.
In the past, few writers have accomplished what Connelly has with this book. To dig beneath the surface and unearth the true personality of the most influential cricketer who has ever lived was always going to be an onerous task, but Connelly, with his engaging and laconic style, manages to do that successfully.
Gilbert is a warm, affectionate human portrait of the man behind the sport's first superstar. It goes beyond the rambling statistics and cricketing legend, skillfully separating the man from the cricketer. In his own imaginative style, Connelly shows Grace in a new light, painting a little-known portrait of the man who revolutionised the game of cricket.
