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My intense fascination for cricket began at an early age, pre-teen days in fact, when I went to watch the great matches played in Dhaka Stadium in the 60s with family members. My mother, two aunts and two uncles were ardent fans of cricket. For me, the newly built Dhaka stadium, the large and wide gallery, the VIP gallery, the massive scoreboard and the green field seemed like something from another world. It made me interested in cricket and cricketers, who helped the game evolve. Today, let us talk about the English cricketer WG Grace.
I first came to know about WG Grace from the big fat Book of Cricket, a kind of album containing beautiful photos that an uncle of mine collected from different magazines and newspapers of the 50s and 60s.
The photos of William Gilbert Grace with his long “uncricketer” like beard and a chubby physique induced laughter in me. He looked anything but a cricketer. Grace was an English cricketer who is considered one of the pioneers in making the game popular in his country. He also brought professionalism to the game. He was a great player in his time displaying his mettle with both ball and bat. He is credited with many batting techniques later adopted by great players in test playing countries.
WG Grace played first-class cricket for 44 seasons, from 1865 to 1908. He captained England, Gloucestershire, the Gentlemen, Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), the United South of England Eleven (USEE) and several other teams.
Historical documents tell us that Grace came from a cricketing family: E. M. Grace was one of his elder brothers and Fred Grace his younger brother. In 1880, they were members of the same England team, the first time three brothers played together in Test cricket.
He qualified as a medical practitioner in 1879. Because of his medical profession, he was nominally an amateur cricketer but he is said to have made more money from his cricketing activities than any professional cricketer. He was an extremely competitive player and was one of the most famous men in England.
From that Book of Cricket of my uncle, I learned a lot about many other famous cricketers of the time, for example, Don Bradman, Frank Worrell, Peter May, Hanif Mohammad, Fazal Mahmud, Garry Sobers, Shubhash Gupte, Wes Hall, Richie Benaud and so on. I have had the good fortune of watching some of these greats play in Dhaka Stadium in the 60s. I shall discuss them one by one.
Shahnoor Wahid is the Associate Editor at The Business Post. The article is written with the support of CricInfo
