W.G.Grace: A Life

click here for more details, find new or used items	Simon Rae Our price £12.99 New from £6.99 Used from £0.82 Pages: 400 (Paperback) ISBN: 0571195733 Pub: Faber and Faber Pub date: 1999-04-19 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 440040

Reader Reviews:

Victorian values laid bare (2/4 people found this helpful)

Immensely well written and thoroughly researched, this paints a warts and all picture of W G Grace. A prodigously talented cricketer, he was also a very obvious "shamateur" - a supposed amateur making a very healthy living from the game of cricket, as well as someone who would go to almost any lengths to win a match, including if not exactly breaking the rules then certainly bending them in the extreme. As an Essex ex-patriate one of my favourite sections is where Grace and his Gloucestershire team take on Essex at Leyton. Grace makes a big mistake in offending Essex's volatile and dangerous fast bowler Charles Kortright by referring to the Essex team as "rabbits ready to put back in the hutch". Kortright works Grace over a treat, peppering him with short balls and clearly getting him LBW and caught behind during one aggressive over, and yet even then Grace's reputation saves him as he glowers at the umpire and intimidates him into not giving him out. Finally Kortright rips another one through Grace's defence and removes two stumps from the ground. Grace stood his ground for a second, then walks off in a foul mood - to be accompanied by one of the earliest and best recorded bits of sledging from Kortright who exclaims "surely you're not going, Doctor? One of the stumps is still standing."
A sheer joy for any true cricket fan and the typically well presented and researched figure work of Bill Frindall is a joy to go through.

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