Fred Spofforth’s rage against WG Grace that paved the way for the first Test match in England

The Australian ace went on to produce the spell of bowling that created the legend of the Ashes.

August 4, 1880. Peeved by WG Grace’s gamesmanship, Fred Spofforth produced one of his demonic spells to rout the home team in the shire of the Graces. Arunabha Sengupta recounts the feat that was instrumental in setting up the first ever Test match in England.

“This will cost you the match.” According to many accounts, these were the ominous words with which Fred Spofforth had stormed off. That was after making his feelings clear in the traditional Australian way at the door of the English dressing room at The Oval in 1882. The Demon had been incensed by the way WG Grace had thrown down the stumps from point when young Sammy Jones had indulged in a bit of gardening outside his crease.

The Australian ace went on to produce the spell of bowling that created the legend of the Ashes. However, somewhat less well known is the prequel to the tale of the Demon’s wrath, a similar bowling spell that took place two years earlier. Moreover, it took place in Grace’s own backyard, the Clifton Cricket Ground in Gloucestershire – the shire of the Graces.

A cold welcome

That summer, the Australian side had arrived to be greeted with a lukewarm and thoroughly unpleasant surprise. They had been rudely informed that Lord’s was unavailable because of a commitment to the touring ‘Gentlemen of Canada’ team – although the said team did not arrive until a month after the men from the antipodes and when they did were a team in shambles. The captain and the best player of the Canadians, a Yorkshireman named Thomas Dale, travelled under the alias of Thomas Jordan. He had good reasons.He was wanted by the police for having deserted the Royal Horse Guards in 1873. Soon he was unmasked and jailed, and the patchwork Canadian team could not cope with the loss of their captain and failed miserably.

Besides, the Australians soon found out that their visit had not been publicised by the promoters. Lord Harris, still disgruntled after a horrid Australian summer of 1878-79, had influenced most of the counties to show little interest in playing them. He complained, of all things, about the visits being too frequent.

The only confirmed fixtures had initially been against non-county odds matches. When they did play a First-Class match against Derbyshire, the Australians won by eight wickets on a bumpy pitch, with Spofforth claiming eight wickets. Yet, they had to do with more and more hastily arranged odds matches as the tour wore on.

It was only in June, a month after they had landed in England, that a rebel Yorkshire eleven took them on. The official county side maintained the boycott, but ten of the top eleven Yorkshiremen played. The delighted Australians won a hard fought game. The North of England was distinctly more welcoming as they arranged another unofficial match that the visitors won again. The success against the odds teams and the unofficial elevens gradually increased public interest in the tourists.

An Eighteen met them at Hull and were crushed. George Bonnor, the giant of a man who had just stepped into the cricket world, won a throwing contest after the game. The team then toured the London and North West Railway Company’s locomotive works at Crewe before rushing to board the train to Gloucestershire for their second major First Class match. They almost missed their train and piled on at the last moment, everyone still in his whites. Tired after their Northern ventures and the Southern coldshoulder, they slumped in their seats, not in the ideal frame of mind to take on the county of WG.

The shire of the Graces

The Champion was waiting for them with fervent anticipation. He usually came across as a great friend of the Australians, but after the defeat of MCC to the visitors in 1878, WG dearly wanted to win against them. Gloucestershire versus the Australians had been billed as nothing short of an international match, and people turned out in hordes.

WG led from the front – not with his willow, but by sending the leather down with his deceptive round arm medium pace. Batsman after batsman fell to his guile, and this included his great friend and captain of the Australians Billy Murdoch. He picked up six for 44 from 45 four ball overs and the visitors managed just 110.

The great man did not succeed with the bat, but his brother EM smashed the bowlers for a well-compiled 65. When Eugene Palmer bowled him, EM was disgusted enough to swing his bat and smash the three stumps out of the ground. Palmer got six for 77 and Spofforth four for 76, but the home side enjoyed an 81 run lead.

On the second day Percy McDonnell sparkled.According to reports, he ‘hit out manfully and had a bit of luck’. Grace got Murdoch again, and snared Spofforth for the second time in the match as the bowler batted at an unusually high No 6. The bearded giant finished with five for 90 this time, taking his number of wickets in the match to 11, but McDonnell’s 79 and some lusty blows by Bonnor took Australia to 246. They were bowled out at the end of the second day, and Gloucestershire needed 166.

Grace’s gamesmanship and Spofforth’s rage

And on the second evening, WG Grace pulled out one of those little tricks from his legendary bag of gamesmanship. The Gloucestershire captain had the pitch rolled on the second evening. Since the Australian innings had ended, this did not really strike the tourists as unusual. However, they were not amused when they arrived at the ground on the third morning to witness the pitch being rolled once again under the great man’s supervision.

This was clearly illegal and captain Billy Murdoch protested. But after all this was Clifton, the seat of the Graces. The roller continued to make its rounds up and down the pitch. As Murdoch came back in frustration, Spofforth’s moustache quivered. He was riled. One does not know for sure whether being dismissed by WG twice in the match played a role. But his face wore the terrifying demonic expression as the Grace brothers, WG and EM, walked out to open the innings on a wicket rendered near perfect by all the rolling.

Already in the midst of a superb tour, Spofforth ran in with a vengeance. WG fell plumb for three, even his flaming eyes not able to turn the umpire’s decision in his favour. Billy Midwinter was sent back for 12. After Harry Boyle had made short work of Frank Townsend, Spofforth unleashed his fury on the remaining Grace brothers. EM was caught and bowled for 41 good runs and GF was bowled for ten.

On that peach of a wicket, Spofforth bowled his way to seven for 54, and England folded for 97. After months of being ignored, the Australians had at last played a First-Class match against a top side and had triumphed in style.

What followed

The 68-run victory brought forth congratulatory cablegrams from the New South Wales and Victorian cricket associations. The tour now became the focus of attention. The team went back north and defeated Eighteen member teams at Hunslet, Bradford and Sunderland.

A writer, identified only as ‘a well-known cricketer’, was quite forthright in Boyle’s & Scott’s Australian Cricket Guide: “At the present time we have a second Australian Eleven carrying all before them in the cricket grounds of England, but who, we regret to add, have been, and are being, met in such a hostile spirit, and treated in such an unfair and unsportsmanlike manner by the cricketing ‘powers that be’ in the old country, that it would appear as if the love of fair play supposed to be inherent in the British race, has completely ceased to exist. One thing is certain, and it is that in all departments of scientific cricket, Australians furnish standards of comparison not surpassed in any part of the world, and there is no fear that a period of degeneracy is likely to set in.”

At this point of time, WG atoned for his unbecoming behaviour at Clifton by doing the Australians a great favour. The father of modern cricket travelled to Canterbury to represent the Gentlemen of England against the Gentlemen of Kent led by Lord Harris. In that gathering of amateurs, he coaxed Lord Harris into organising a match between a full strength England side and the Australian eleven. During the next few days, Grace and Harris spoke to Charles Alcock, the secretary of Surrey, and a match was scheduled at The Oval for three days starting September 6. “CW Alcock implored me to help to make things pleasant before they left,” Harris observed later, somewhat churlishly.

But, the much needed match was set up. On September 6, England met Australia for the first ever Test match in the old country. Sadly, a few days earlier, Spofforth had broken a finger during a match against an Eighteen of Scarborough – while facing a bowler of dubious actionnamed James Frank. The Demon bowler had to miss the Test. As a result, WG Grace scored 152 on debut and England won by five wickets.

Brief scores:

Australians 110 (Percy McDonnell 42 ; WG Grace 6 for 44) & 246 (Percy McDonnell 79 ; WG Grace 5 for 90) beat Gloucestershire 191 (EM Grace 65, Walter Gilbert 48* ; Fred Spofforth 4 for 76, George Palmer 6 for 77) & 97 (EM Grace 41 ; Fred Spofforth 7 for 54) by 68 runs

(Arunabha Sengupta is a cricket historian and Chief Cricket Writer at CricketCountry. He writes about the history and the romance of the game, punctuated often by opinions about modern day cricket, while his post-graduate degree in statistics peeps through in occasional analytical pieces. The author of three novels, he can be followed on Twitter at http://twiter.com/senantix)