WG Grace by Low Robert

Author:Low, Robert [Robert Low]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781857828320
Publisher: John Blake
Published: 2012-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

THE BOWLER

As a young man, Grace was a brisk round-arm fast-medium-pacer, whose pace slowed down as his girth expanded. It is often forgotten that he was first selected for the Gentlemen in 1865 as a bowler, and his youthful action was described as attractive and ‘slinging’. He appears to to have been a pretty straightforward sort of bowler who ‘had not then acquired any of his subsequent craftiness with the ball’. He always had the knack of moving it away from the right-handed bat off the pitch – even in his fast days – which he developed when he reduced his speed. He could also produce the occasional slower ball, with the general idea of tempting the batsman into lofting a catch to long-leg, where Fred Grace, a brilliant fielder, was frequently the grateful recipient. It was a successful gambit, if an expensive one.

W.G. generally bowled from round the wicket, still wearing his red and yellow MCC cap, and his tall bearded figure must have presented a formidable aspect as he raced in to bowl. He tended to move swiftly across to the off side, a manoeuvre which he would not have been allowed to get away with these days for fear of roughing up the wicket, but in the mid- to late-1860s the wickets were so bad that even Grace’s massive boots could not have made them much worse. It also brought him a lot of catches off his own bowling. What struck everybody was that he always bowled a good length; no one could ever recall a long-hop, which speaks of long hours of practice. He was always a perfectionist.

But it is his later style of bowling, adopted in the mid-1870s, that is of more interest. Once he had slowed down, his principal delivery was a gentle leg-break and his continuing success with it baffled most people. He looked utterly innocuous, from close up and from the pavilion, yet he lured batsmen out by the sackful, albeit expensively. Lord Hawke put it thus:

His obstinate persistence in invariably bowling one leg ball in every over must have cost thousands of runs, but when he did get a man caught by his leg-trap his glee was delightful. His bowling looked very easy from the pavilion, but it was a great mistake to underrate its artfulness, for he put just a little more or less work on his ball which was often deceptive.

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