Almanac Cricket – WG Grace and …

 

WG Grace and Samuel John Hand (1874)

 

Samuel John Hand was born in 1864 in Cornwall. By the end of that year the Hand family, father Samuel, mother Elizabeth, older sister Eliza and Samuel John were passengers on the migrant ship Queen Bee bound for South Australia. They first settled in Wallaroo, then in 1867 moved to Moonta where Samuel senior was employed at the newly-opened copper mine. Young Samuel was soon given responsibility for a goat and cart. The goat would provide milk for the children of the growing family. The cart would be used to collect wood for the home fireplace.

 

On 23 March 1874 Samuel John, together with his Uncle David and several friends, travelled to Kadina to see WG Grace and the All-England XI take on the local Yorke Peninsula cricket team. After negotiations had broken down between the Englishmen and the SA Cricketing Association in Adelaide, a group of Kadina businessmen had provided the funds to secure the match.

 

A level playing area was prepared on the stony ground in the vicinity of the Kadina racecourse and a matting wicket laid down. The following is an extract from the book The Three Sams by Milton Hand.

 

The oval area was fenced off in the middle of the racetrack and the stands at the eastern and western sides were covered with canvas for the convenience of the 500 patrons lucky enough to obtain seats. The players’ area was also a separate enclosure to ensure their privacy. The playing area was as level as a “bowling alley” but, like the countryside in general, bare of grass following the hot summer. Samuel John was thrilled to join the other boys present in picking up stones from the playing area before the match.

 

The match was a one-sided affair. The Yorke Peninsula team of twenty-two were dismissed for 42 and 13. The All-England total of 64 meant a win by an innings and 9 runs on the second day. Grace, who had made only five in the England innings, made 58 when the team batted again in an exhibition innings later in the day.

 

Near the end of the celebratory banquet held that evening, Grace announced that his team was leaving for Adelaide for a match with a South Australian team. The Kadina organisers were enraged, believing they had negotiated exclusive rights to the England team.

 

Young Samuel Hand left school at an early age, becoming a ‘picky boy’. This work involved sorting the ore according to its value and was carried out by boys not old enough to go underground and old men unfit for other work. In 1878 Samuel became an underground miner. He played cricket in the local competition through the 1880s and 1890s and served as Secretary of the East Moonta Rising Star Cricket Club.

 

 

 

Grandstand – Kadina racecourse

 

 

WG Grace and Andrew Scott (1874)

 

 

Andrew Scott was born in 1851 in Leith, Scotland, the son of a Wesleyan ironmonger. The family migrated to Adelaide where Andrew attended St Peters College. He then completed an Arts degree at Melbourne University (Adelaide University was not in existence). Returning to Adelaide, Scott taught at the newly established Prince Alfred College and played cricket for North Adelaide Young Mens (later North Adelaide) Cricket Club, one of the foundation SACA clubs. He became the club’s leading bowler. Together with fellow North Adelaide players WGP (Percy) Joyner and EG Millard, Scott was selected in the SA team to play against the WG Grace All-England XI in Adelaide in March 1874.

 

 

In the first innings Grace was dismissed for 6, caught on the boundary by Crooks from the bowling of Lungley. Grace disputed the catch saying that it had not been taken within the field of play. The South Australian XXII scored 82 and 63. The All-England XI made 108 in their first innings and scored the 38 needed for victory for the loss of three wickets. They agreed to bat on, presumably so the large crowd could see the great man at the crease again. Grace batted at the fall of the fourth wicket.

 

 

The South Australian Register recorded the details:

 

 

The English Captain now took his place at the wickets, and as soon as he made his appearance he was greeted with hearty cheers. … The English Champion then faced Cole, and the third ball was well tried at slip by Scott, but it was too difficult to hold, and Mr.Grace scored his first (it proved to be his only) run. Scott’s next over was an eventful one. It opened with a wide, and the second ball of the over proved too much for the Champion. Mr. Grace tried to play the ball hard down, but it shot into his wicket, and amidst a mighty cheer from all parts of the field, the leviathan scorer had to return to the tent with only a score of 1 – the lowest score we believe he has made in the colonies.

 

 

Among those cheering the loudest were the boys of Prince Alfred College where classes had been cancelled for the day. Andrew Scott was the only South Australian batsman to record a duck in each innings. Wicketless in the first English innings, he took 4 wickets for 10 runs from 51 deliveries in the second.

 

 

Later in the year Scott captured five wickets in each innings  in the first inter-colonial match at the Adelaide Oval when the South Australian XVIII played the Victoria XI.

 

 

On his retirement as a player, Scott became the Auditor for the North Adelaide Cricket Club. He moved on from school teaching, eventually becoming Superintendent of the Teachers Training College in SA. He was choirmaster at the Kent Town Methodist Church and a keen golfer at the Adelaide Golf Club. After his untimely death in 1907, a perpetual trophy was instituted in his honour by the club. The first recipient in 1908 was Dr Hubert Jay, who at that time also played cricket for North Adelaide. To this day, members of the now Royal Adelaide Golf Club compete annually for the Andrew Scott Memorial Shield.

 

 

WG Grace and John ‘Dinny’ Reedman (1891)

 

 

WG Grace returned to Australia in 1891 as captain of Lord Sheffield’s touring team. In the first match in November, Grace batted at the fall of the first wicket after South Australia had been dismissed for 163. The SA Register picks up the story:

 

 

As he (Grace) left the pavilion the spectators cheered and cheered again, while the South Australian players gathered in the centre of the ground and paid a tribute to the world’s greatest cricketer. The old champion, weighing over 17 stone, almost required a stretch of the imagination to realize that he was once the champion 200 yards runner of England, but with all his weight he sprinted down the wicket for his first run when he had placed a ball from Giffen past mid-on.

 

 

Then, after Grace had scored just one more single:

 

 

He cast prudence to the winds, and, as though he were twenty-four again, ventured to lift a tempting ball from Giffen over the ropes. He only skied the ball a long way in front of Reedman at deep square-leg …… It seemed any odds on the ball, which looked likely to drop at least twenty-five or thirty yards from where Reedman started. With a grand effort however, Reedman did reach it, but only with his left hand, and sticking that out, the ball stuck in his fingers, and deafening applause greeted the most wonderful catch ever made on the ground. Reedman had to shake hands with all his comrades, the more experienced of whom said they had never seen a finer catch made anywhere.

 

John ‘Dinny’ Reedman made 13no and 15 and had bowling figures of 0/29 for the match but had almost run out one of the English openers with a brilliant throw from the outfield. He had then taken a catch for the ages. Reedman played in only one Test for Australia but appeared for South Australia on 76 occasions, several times as captain. He was an outstanding footballer and is a member of the SA Sport Hall of Fame. Cricket historian Wayne Lawrence is at present writing a biography of Reedman.

 

 

It should be noted that, in the England total of 323, George Giffen took 7/152 in 41 of the 98 overs bowled in the innings. In the Adelaide Test played later in the season, Grace made 58. His other scores on his three visits to South Australia were 5, 54, 6, 1 and 2.

 

 

 

WG Grace and the LJ Nicolls bat (1894)

 

 

The history of early cricket bat and ball manufacture is told in the book Quilt Winders and Pod Shavers. Levi J Nicolls, a carpenter by trade, began making cricket bats in the East Sussex village of Robertsbridge in 1876. The bats gained a fine reputation. Nicolls patented a modification that overcame the problem of misshapen handles.

 

 

In October 1895 Nicolls received a letter from Dr WG Grace who wrote:

 

 

“I used one of your bats at Hastings in 1894 and scored 131. I may mention that it was perfectly new. I kept it until this year and have scored 2,000 runs with it. I used it when I made my 100th century and scored 1,000 runs in May with it. So I think I may call it my record bat.”

 

 

A photograph of Grace wielding the bat once adorned the wall of the front bar of The George Inn in Robertsbridge. It may still be there. The reputation of bat makers LJ Nicolls Ltd continued to flourish. In the post-WWII period, an amalgamation with Gray and Sons Ltd occurred. Gray-Nicolls Ltd continues to be synonymous with bat making throughout the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

WG Grace and Herbert ‘Ranji’ Hordern (1908)

 

 

Leg spin, googly bowler Herbert ‘Ranji’ Hordern took 46 wickets in the 7 Tests he played between 1910 and 1912. In 1911 he captured 12 wickets (5/85 and 7/90) in the First Test against England in Sydney. He dismissed JB Hobbs on four occasions in the series.

 

 

Prior to this, Hordern had undertaken tertiary studies in dentistry in the USA. He toured England with a team of Pennsylvania cricketers. Hordern was invited to play for the London County team in a match at the Crystal Palace Ground where he opened the batting with WG Grace. Hordern relates the story in his delightful autobiography, Googlies – Coals from a Test Cricketer’s Fireplace.

 

 

Even at sixty the great WG was still a wonderful batsman: his only failing as far as I could see were his ‘legs’. His huge bulk, added to the advancing years formed the weakest link in the chain for the old man was not sprightly on his pins, as I was soon to find out.
… With all his greatness, the old man was human enough to want to ‘get off his egg’ as quickly as possible. He played the first ball slowly down the pitch and in doing so continued on in a shambling run to my end. I was a bit shy on London County tactics but was stimulated by a thundering “Run, boy, run”. Run I did and only scrambled safely home by a baseball slide on the flat of my stomach.  After collecting my breath from the adjacent atmosphere, I took strike and ‘pushed’ the ball through the covers for an easy ‘oner’ – in fact a ‘twoer’ really as I ran two myself. In the eagerness of youth, I tore up the wicket and on reaching the G.O.M. was met with “Go back boy, go back”.
I had to do another baseball slide to save my wicket. So in the first two balls of the match I was ‘winded’ twice – I had failed to realise that the Old Man only ran occasionally for himself and never for his batting partner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

WG Grace and me

 

 

Some context. Pardon my indulgence. Both Andrew Scott and John Reedman played cricket for North Adelaide Cricket Club. In 1928, as a result of a SACA boundary redistribution, the club moved its home base from Adelaide Oval to Prospect Oval and combined with the local Prospect club to become Prospect District Cricket Club. I have been involved with Prospect for many years as a player, member of committee and supporter and feel a certain affinity with Scott and Reedman.

 

 

In 1973 I spent the year in the UK playing as much cricket as I could. I was fortunate to spend some months ‘working’ at Gray Nicolls in Robertsbridge. Pubs of East Sussex were on the agenda, although not many evenings were spent at The George.

 

 

I came across the Hordern book while researching the life and cricket career of John Drake (Jack) Scott, the NSW and SA tearaway fast bowler, Test umpire and, for a time, PDCC coach. Scott and Hordern had opened the bowling for NSW in a match against Tasmania in 1911 – the ‘cannon ball and corkscrew’ attack.

 

 

Samuel John Hand was the elder brother of my grandmother Sarah Emily Magor (nee Hand). Born in 1886, she was 22 years younger. A lovely, gentle soul, her Cornish pasties were surpassed only by those made by her daughter, my mother.

 

 

WG Grace to Samuel John Hand to Sarah Emily Hand to Peter Crossing.
Does that make it three degrees of separation?

 

 

 

References:
Barty-King, Hugh, Quilt Winders and Pod Shavers, McDonald and Jane, London,1979.
Cudmore, Michael, The Royal Adelaide Golf Club, 1892-1992, RAGC, Seaton, SA,1992.
Gibbs, Ronald, A history of Prince Alfred College, Peacock Pub, Kent Town, SA,1984.
Hand, Milton (revised by Ian Hand), The three Sams, Ian Hand, Christie Downs, SA. 2024.
Horden, Herbert V., Googlies – Coals from a Test Cricketer’s Fireplace, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1932.
Martin, Dorothy MBE, The Cricket Bat Factory (http://www.aboutrobertsbridge.org.uk/)

 

 

 

To read more by Peter Crossing click here.

 

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