W. G. Grace's cricket career (1864 to 1870)

W. G. Grace established his reputation in 1864 and, by 1870, was widely recognised as the outstanding player in English cricket.

Grace was still 15 when the 1864 season began and was 22 when the 1870 season ended. He lived with his parents at Downend, near Bristol, throughout the period. His father, Henry Mills Grace, was the local GP and, a lifelong cricket enthusiast, had founded Mangotsfield Cricket Club in 1845 to represent several neighbouring villages including Downend. In 1846, this club merged with the West Gloucestershire Cricket Club whose name was adopted until 1867. West Gloucestershire Cricket Club was renamed Gloucestershire County Cricket Club in 1867 and achieved first-class status in 1870. Grace himself recalled: "Though the Gloucestershire County Club did not play regularly until 1870, my father frequently got up inter-county matches before that time. Those matches have never been generally chronicled, but they were played for five or six years, before first-class county cricket was established".

Grace had been "notoriously unscholarly" as a boy. Although opportunities arose, he never went to university as his father was intent upon him pursuing a medical career. But Grace was approached by both Oxford University Cricket Club and Cambridge University Cricket Club. In 1866, when he played a match at Oxford, one of the Oxford players, Edmund Carter, tried to interest him in becoming an undergraduate. Then, in 1868, Grace received overtures from Caius College, Cambridge, which had a long medical tradition. Grace said he would have gone to either Oxford or Cambridge if his father had allowed it. Instead, he enrolled at Bristol Medical School in October 1868, aged 20, and was a medical student until he finally qualified in November 1879.

Cricket in the 1860s underwent an evolutionary phase with the legalisation of overarm bowling in June 1864 and Grace himself said it was "no exaggeration to say that, between 1860 and 1870, English cricket passed through its most critical period" with the game in transition and "it was quite a revolutionary period so far as its rules were concerned". Grace had much to say about the state of the grounds in the 1860s and declared that Lord's "was in a very unsatisfactory condition". He added that wickets at The Oval were always much better than at Lord's, where the clay in the soil handicapped the groundsmen. Writing in 1899, Grace recollected that he "could go on to the pitch at Lord's and pick up a handful of small pieces of gravel"; a source of danger as a fast ball hitting one of those small stones would "fly high in the air".

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