You might have seen the picture of this bushy
gentleman, W G Grace (1848-1915). He is one of the pioneers of cricket
and the reason behind the popularity of the game in its early years.
Every test match between Australia and England was
the biggest sporting event in the world in those days and for most of
the crowd, he was the sole reason they had come to watch. He had such an
influence on the game that while playing against South Africa XI, the
scorer made his total to be 392. Grace told
him “to round it off to make it 400”. He did exactly that!
But the biggest surprise is that he used to make
around £400,000 from cricket in today’s currency in those years despite
cricket being an amateur sports! This amount is more than what Shane
Warne used to get in his heydays in early 2000s
despite all the TV rights, endorsements and commercialisation of the game.
And Warne was the most highly paid cricketer at the time.
He was also one of the world’s first sportsman to endorse a product and his face was the most recognisable face in the world after Queen Victoria.
David Firth writes “His bowling was accompanied
by chatter that would be appreciated by modern chirpers in the field,
though it was frowned upon in an age when courtesy and good manners were
cherished. Naïve batsmen were sometimes invited
to look at a flock of birds (sometimes imaginary) flying over a corner
of the field - always directly across a dazzling sun of course. At his
favourite position of point, he liked to air his views on batsmen and
the state of the game, a practice even more
annoying in view of his surprisingly high-pitched voice.”
(Mohammad Jawad)
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