We regret to announce the death, which took place on Saturday morning at his home in Kent, of Dr. W. G. Grace, the famous cricketer. Dr. Grace, who completed his sixty-seventh year last July, had an attack of cerebral haemorrhage last week.
Dr. William Gilbert Grace was by common consent the greatest and most attractive figure that ever appeared on the cricket field. In his all-round mastery of the game, in the length of years during which he stood far above all rivals, in the amazing sum total of his cricketing achievements, and by no means least of all in the popular interest he excited, no cricketer, living or dead, has ever approached him, and it is doubtful if any ever will.
While Dr. Grace in his stupendous total output hopelessly outdistanced all rivals, he had a remarkable list of isolated achievements to his credit. For many years he held the record for the highest individual score. This was an innings of 344 made in 1876 for the M.C.C. against Kent, and it remained the record score until MacLaren beat it with 424 against Somerset 19 years later. The most remarkable year of Dr. Grace╒s career was 1895, when he was 47 years of age. In that season he scored a thousand runs before the end of May, completed his hundredth century and finally scored 2,346 runs. He received more than one handsome testimonial in recognition of this feat, and a letter of congratulation from the Prince of Wales gave him ╘profound pleasure╒. Like Barlow, Dr. Grace went through his long experience of first-class cricket without ever getting a pair of spectacles.
A Great Personality.
Dr. Grace was always an attractive personality on the cricket field, and in the later years of his great career carried a certain atmosphere of romance about him. His great towering figure, with his strong features and full black beard, instantly commanded attention, and there was always the expectation among the spectators that he might be out for some great performance. Descriptions of him even at his best make no reference to any special degree of style in his batting. His great height made it inconvenient for him to hold his bat down to the block-hole; it was generally held some distance off the pitch, looking a mere toy in the hands of a giant. Yet it was with a remarkably straight bat that the ball was played. His batting was distinguished for its strength and certainty rather than for its elegance; his regard, however, for orthodoxy of style comes out in his own statement that he was forty years of age before he adopted the fashionable ╘pull╒ stroke. ╥Style is ease, and ease is strength,╙ he once said, and that summed up his creed on the point.
As a bowler in his later years he looked rather ponderous; his leisurely amble up to the wicket and slow round-arm delivery often excited merriment, but the simple-looking ball which he delivered ╤ a slow good-length one with a slight break, generally from the leg side ╤ was by no means easy to judge. And perhaps his success was partly due to the fact that most of the batsmen felt that he knew a bit more than the best of them. He held to the old-fashioned theory that length and straightness were the secret of good bowling, and that one of the greatest mistakes a bowler could make was to try to ╘break╒ too much. In his early days he fielded in various positions, frequently at fine leg, but later his recognised place was at point. Many a fine cut he snapped up in his large, safe hands, and his little trick of holding the ball behind him after he had caught it often excited vain hopes of an escape in the unlucky batsman. He held to the view that a thoroughly efficient fielder was worth his place in any team, even if he got no runs at all, and he considered ╘mid on╒ the least risky place for a duffer.
