England / Gloucestershire
1937-11-15
In November 1937 Wally Hammond — the leading professional batsman of his era — was accepted by MCC as an amateur, opening the door to the England captaincy he received six months later for the 1938 Ashes. The change crystallised inter-war debates about the amateur-professional divide and the unwritten rule that England's captain be amateur.
Gloucestershire and MCC
1927-05-31
By 31 May 1927 the 23-year-old Wally Hammond had scored 1,042 first-class runs for the season, the first batsman to make 1,000 by the end of May since W.G. Grace in 1895. The achievement announced the post-Hobbs generation and made Hammond a Test certainty for the rest of the decade.
England
1915-10-23
William Gilbert Grace, the Victorian giant who had effectively invented modern batsmanship and dominated English cricket for forty years, died at his home in Mottingham on 23 October 1915. He was 67. The Zeppelin raids over London in his final weeks were said by family to have agitated him beyond endurance.
Gloucestershire v Somerset
1895-05-17
On 17 May 1895, in his 47th year, W.G. Grace became the first cricketer to score 100 first-class hundreds, raising the milestone in a Championship match against Somerset at Bristol. He carried on to 288 — his ninth-highest career score — and when he reached 200 the home crowd brought champagne onto the field for him to toast himself at the wicket. It was the centrepiece of an 'Indian Summer' that produced 1,016 runs in May alone.
Gloucestershire v Sussex/Somerset/Yorkshire/Middlesex/Kent
1895-05-30
Grace started his 1895 season on 9 May and finished it on 30 May with 1,016 first-class runs at an average over 100. Scores of 13, 103, 18, 25, 288, 52, 257, 73*, 18 and 169 made him the first player to score 1,000 first-class runs in May, a Victorian benchmark only matched twice since — by Wally Hammond in 1927 and Charlie Hallows in 1928. He was 46 going on 47.
Gloucestershire / MCC / Gentlemen / South
1873-08-31
In 1873 W.G. Grace became the first cricketer to score 1,000 first-class runs and take 100 first-class wickets in the same English season. He repeated the feat seven more times before 1886. The 'Grace double' set the bar for the all-rounder's season for the next century.
Multiple
1869-09-01
In 1869, his fifth full season of first-class cricket and the year he turned 21, W.G. Grace produced batting figures that ended any debate about the leading cricketer in England. He scored 1,320 first-class runs at an average of 57.3 — at a time when totals over 200 were rare and averages over 40 were almost unknown — and turned the Gentlemen vs Players fixture, which the Players had usually dominated, into a one-man Gentlemen victory.
Gentlemen of the South vs Players of the South
1865-06-22
On 22 June 1865, sixteen days short of his seventeenth birthday, William Gilbert Grace played his first first-class match. Picked by the Gentlemen of the South against the Players of the South at the Oval mainly for his bowling, he and I.D. Walker bowled unchanged through both Players innings. Grace took 13 wickets in the match. Although the Players won by 118 runs, the cricket world had its first sight of the man who would dominate the sport for the next thirty years.