Who is England's greatest cricketer?

[Fuller Pilch]

The correct way of summoning him is to to say Grace was past it by 1895. Shrewsbury and then Ranji were comparably good.

Well he did turn 47 in 1895

 

[Magrat Garlick]

grace

the delta between him and his contemporaries was bradmanesque

there were some pretty good numbers run on it in a thread on this forum. hopefully someone else remembers the exact thread.

this is the one i remember, from @OverratedSanity

Pretty decent run from Grace here :

Absolutely ridiculous

 

[trundler]

Wasn't Grace outscoring all of England in terms of centuries?

 

[OverratedSanity]

Cricketarchive going behind a paywall was a tragedy

 

[ankitj]

Sucked in 1875, the toughest year to bat in. Hack.

PS. I came into this forum not thinking much of Grace and thought it was typical English romanticism about old things that sustained his reputation. I was schooled by someone here on these stats and I am wiser man now.

 

[h_hurricane]

Honestly, it is very hard for me to rate players that far back in history, hence I tend to leave them out of discussion. I would definitely respect an opinion that Grace was the greatest English cricketer, but would go with someone who accomplished more in the premier format of the game like Hobbs, Hammond, Hutton or Barnes.

 

[Pap Finn Keighl]

Ranji's name missing in the options

 

[Fuller Pilch]

Ranji's name missing in the options

Fair point. I thought about Barrington, but forgot about Ranji.

 

[Pap Finn Keighl]

WG
Barnes
Botham
Hutton
Hammond
Hobbs
Trueman
Ranji

 

[trundler]

Hobbs bested his contemporaries in a more professional era by a margin only exceeded by Bradman so I'll go for him. Obscene FC numbers and the greatest opener in tests to this day. Lost his prime years to WW1 but reinvented his game to go on for a decade and well into his 40s. The Master.

 

[Red]

Grace was a fat hairy cheat, but he was the greatest cricketer.

Far ahead of his contemporaries and it’s said he was the second most recognisable person in the empire in his era.

 

[wpdavid]

Grace arguably the greatest English cricketer rather than England's greatest cricketer, but it's hardly his fault that we didn't play international matches when he was in his prime.

 

[cricketsavant]

greatest ≠ best

Really? In sport that is the usual equation. Bocing has Ali and Robinson regarded as greatest because they are, according to most, the best.

In cricket I have always heard it has greatest = best.

Maybe you are thinking of most influential or iconic?

 

[the big bambino]

I'm amazed that WG features so strongly in the voting. It's like voting on the best car ever and picking a Model T Ford ahead of a Ferrari.

WG was the greatest cricketer in possibly the only fair comparison you can make and that is the way he dominated his era and for the length of time he did it. Then add his substantial influence on the game. Might cast my vote for him now.

 

[a massive zebra]

Wasn't Grace outscoring all of England in terms of centuries?

In a few seasons, such as 1871 where Grace made 10 of the 17 centuries scored in the season.

Between 1866 and 1876, Grace scored 16,264 runs in first class cricket @ 56.66 with 56 centuries and took nearly 900 wickets at an average of under 15. Over this period, the next highest run scorer was Harry Jupp who made 11,000 runs @ 24.88 with 8 centuries and the next highest average (among regular players) was recorded by Richard Daft who made 5,379 runs @ 32.60 with 6 centuries. No one, not even Bradman, has ever achieved a greater level of dominance over their peers.

Some interesting contemporary articles on W.G. Grace.

 

[Howe_zat]

If you build it, he will come.

 

[Pothas]

Really? In sport that is the usual equation. Bocing has Ali and Robinson regarded as greatest because they are, according to most, the best.

In cricket I have always heard it has greatest = best.

Maybe you are thinking of most influential or iconic?

Greatest pretty much encompasses all of those things. I know absolutely nothing about boxing but Ali is surely an example of this, don't really get more iconic than him.

 

[a massive zebra]

Grace was a fat hairy cheat, but he was the greatest cricketer.

Far ahead of his contemporaries and it’s said he was the second most recognisable person in the empire in his era.

Grace wasn't fat when he was dominating the game in the late 1860s and 1870s though. Those iconic photos were all taken towards the end of his career when he was past his best. If you wondered what Grace looked like as a young man, take a look here:

How do you rate W.G. Grace?

At test level he'd have faced Demon Spofforth and Trumble. For county cricket, Lohmann, Tom Richardson, Peel and guys like that. He was coming to the end of his career when cricket was being constituted into something recognisably modern. The Gentlemen v Player matches by the way were the...

www.cricketweb.net

Grace was uber competitive and would certainly stretch the rules the limit, but to call him a cheat is a little strong. Those stories of him replacing the stumps and continuing to bat after being bowled are blown out of all proportion and ludicrously exaggerated. It happened once, in a charity match, where the crowd had come to see him bat.

 

[a massive zebra]

Really? In sport that is the usual equation. Bocing has Ali and Robinson regarded as greatest because they are, according to most, the best.

In cricket I have always heard it has greatest = best.

Maybe you are thinking of most influential or iconic?

I have no interest in boxing, but in pretty much any sport where the standard of play over time can be directly compared using purely objective measures such as recorded times and/or distances, the quality of play has improved since Ali and Robinson's generation and pretty much all the world records have been set in the last 30-40 years. So sure, Ali and Robinson may well be the most influential and iconic boxers ever, but it would go against all the objective evidence we have about the evolution of sport to claim a couple of boxers from 50-80 years ago actually reached the highest standards ever achieved in their sport and would beat every boxer from later generations.

 

[a massive zebra]

The correct way of summoning him is to to say Grace was past it by 1895. Shrewsbury and then Ranji were comparably good.

Grace was at his very best from the mid 1860s until he started to gain weight in the late 1870s, but he remained one of the leading cricketers in the world for another couple of decades.

In truth, 1895 is a poor year in which to claim Grace was "past it", because it was his best season of the entire 1890s. Between 1895 and 1898, Grace went through a late renaissance and was in the best form he had been for around a decade. Just take a look at his stats in these seasons as opposed to the seasons directly preceding 1895:

1890: 1,476 runs @ 28.38 with 1 century and 9 half-centuries.
1891: 771 runs @ 19.76 with 0 centuries and 5 half-centuries.
1892: 1,055 runs @ 31.02 with 0 centuries and 8 half-centuries.
1893: 1,609 runs @ 35.75 with 1 century and 11 half-centuries.
1894: 1,293 runs @ 29.38 with 3 centuries and 5 half-centuries.
1895, 2,346 runs @ 51.00 with 9 centuries and 5 half-centuries.
1896: 2,135 runs @ 42.70 with 4 centuries and 11 half-centuries.
1897: 1,532 runs @ 39.28 with 4 centuries and 7 half-centuries.
1898: 1,513 runs @ 42.02 with 3 centuries and 8 half-centuries.

By 1895, Shrewsbury had been probably the leading batsman in England for about a decade and Ranji was fast emerging as his successor, but Grace remained a leading player (along with the likes of Bobby Abel, William Gunn, Walter Read and Andrew Stoddart) and would do so for the next few seasons. By 1899, he was past it.