Interestingly, when Grace came onto the scene in the early 1860s, Cambridgeshire had one of the best county sides in England. They didn't really have much depth, but their leading batsmen Bob Carpenter and Tom Hayward, and their leading bowler George Tarrant were among the best cricketers in the country. Here are mini biographies of their leading batsmen, taken from H.S. Altham's book A History of Cricket:
Bob Carpenter
He was pre-eminently a back player, but he combined with his strength of defence great quickness of foot and driving power. He was at his very best against slow bowling, which he would punish unmercifully; in fact, he always liked to "nurse" a slow bowler in order to make the most out of him. There was no harder driver in England in the sixties. He would come down the wicket and hit "like a horse kicking," while he also favoured the genuine leg-hit, though in this respect he resembled the Hon. C.G. Lyttleton rather than Daft, and tended to lift the ball. He, like Hayward, twice exceeded the century against the Gentlemen, but at The Oval, and not Lord's. Carpenter was probably the most famous of all the members of the United Eleven, and made many runs in their great matches with the A.E.E. For a time he acted as a coach at Marlborough College, and within one generation no school can have enjoyed the services of two greater players than Carpenter and Stephenson.
Tom Hayward
No one, in Daft's opinion, with the exception of Arthur Shrewsbury, rose to such heights of batsmanship from such slender physical resources as did Hayward. He was rather below medium height and very spare of frame, weighing little more than 9 stone when he first began to play in big matches; added to this, he was never blessed with good health, or with the good temperament that so often goes along with it. He looked, indeed, but a frail figure as he stood at the wicket, holding the bat very lightly in his hands and at the end of its handle, and yet in all England there was no more graceful or masterly batsman, with the possible exception of Dick Daft himself. Hayward was essentially a forward player, with something of the pendulum correctness of swing that Pilch possessed. He was a beautiful off-driver, but his real forte was his on-side play, and especially his ability to force the ball off the leg-stump and his legs, between mid-on and short-leg, a stroke which his nephew played to perfection, and surely must have inherited. In spite of his natural disadvantages, Hayward was at his very best of fiery wickets, when his ability to keep down the rising ball was most marked. One weak point in his armour must be mentioned - he was a deplorable judge of a run. Like the younger Tom, he was a more than useful medium paced bowler, and an excellent field at cover. His long scores are innumerable. In 1859 he scored 220, playing as a given man for the Gentlemen of Cambridgeshire against the University, and twice he obtained a century for the Players against the Gentlemen at Lord's, an example which his nephew was to follow at an interval of thirty years.
And here is a mini biography of the other leading batsman of the time, Nottinghamshire's Richard Daft, taken from the same source:
To say that he was the greatest of all Notts batsmen would be to challenge criticism (for has not W.G. himself nominated Shrewsbury as his first choice from all the world ?), and it may be maintained that William Gunn equalled him in point of style, but to his contemporaries at least Daft stood alone as a model of grace and commanding execution. His was essentially what Mr. Cardus would call "the grand manner" in batting; there was none of that grubbing about the blockhole, which Pycroft so deplored; he stood up to his full height at the crease, and was the beau-ideal of that "upright and manly style" of play which the early "Lillywhites" always urged upon young cricketers. He was quick on his feet and always ready to drive; he made full use of his wrists, and he was a master of the under-leg stroke of which W.L. Murdoch was perhaps the last regular exponent; but the greatest feature of Daft's batting was his masterly treatment of the quick-rising ball on fast and for the most part fiery wickets. In his time he had to play many very great fast bowlers, and he was at his very best against them. Caffyn relates how Edgar Willsher once said to him: "When Richard plays that ball (a good length one on the off stump), I always feel as if he said, 'If that's all you can do, Ned, you'd better put somebody else on at once.' " As an offset to this evidence we may notice Pycroft's verdict that there was never a man so contemptuous of a shooter as Daft!
In 1862, on an impossible wicket at Lord's, he played an innings of 118 for the North v. South which was literally the talk of the season, four hours with not the ghost of a chance under conditions that the modern batsman would denounce if met with on the village green. Within two years of his first appearance in big cricket, Bell's Life could write of quite a modest innings: "Those who have witnessed Daft play an innings know that it is cricket, consequently we cannot say more than that it was obtained in his usual style."
Here is a mini biography of the aforementioned George Tarrant, taken from Simon Rae's book W.G. Grace: A Life:
George Tarrant, by contrast, was a surprisingly small man, but made up for his lack of stature by bowling with such ferocity that he earned the title ‘Tear ‘em Tarrant’. He was also a noted pugilist and George Parr’s minder. (On one occasion Parr swung the first blow in a fight then calmly called up Tarrant to finish the business.) Tarrant bowled round the wicket, and his approach to the crease was electrifying: ‘He was all over the place like a flash of lightening, never sparing himself, and frightening timid batsmen. He was the terror of twenty-twos when he played for the All-England Eleven, some of his long hops bounding over their heads, causing them to change colour and funk at the next straight one.’
For all his speed and hostility, Tarrant's Nottinghamshire peer John Jackson was generally considered to be a better bowler as he had greater control, more variety and more cunning. Here is a mini biography of Jackson taken from Altham's book:
1855 saw the first appearance in county cricket of John Jackson, by common agreement one of the greatest fast bowlers that ever lived. On the evidence of figures alone, his title to fame is unassailable. In the seven years, 1856-62, he captured 1,899 wickets, with an average bag of 345 for three consecutive seasons. From his earliest years, when, as a small boy, he used to run barefoot after hounds and throw stones at every legitimate and illegitimate mark, Jackson was big, strong, and active, and by the time he appeared for Notts he stood over 6 feet high and weighed 15 stone. His action was a true round-arm, and though he bowled like a machine, always well within himself, his pace was truly terrific, and like that of the best of his school, he made the ball go slightly with his arm. On the fiery wickets then prevalent, especially at Lord's, he was altogether intimidating, and not a few of the best batsmen of the time were known to retire precipitately towards square-leg. He never liked being hit, and when things looked troublesome was apt to try an extra fast full pitch somewhere in the neighbourhood of the batsman's head! To the twenty-twos he was literally a terror, and once for the A.E.E. against Twenty-Two of Uppingham he bowled six men in seven balls. Against Sixteen of Oxford University he captured, in 1858, 16 wickets for 62, and, in 1862, 17 wickets for 63. The feet in which he took most pride himself was when for the North he got 9 Southern wickets and lamed - sic visum superis - Johnny Wisden so that he couldn't bat. "Old Jack" was a great character; from his habit of blowing his nose violently whenever he got a wicket he was called "The Foghorn" by his colleagues, but with the world at large he soon earned the name of "The Demon," and well, we may believe, deserved it. Until the Champion became as much of a household word as G.O.M., Jackson, alone of cricketers, had appeared in the pages of Mr. Punch.
It is sad to read of his last years, when, but for the help of the Cricketers' Fund Friendly Society and the kindly aid of friends in the North, Jackson must indeed have known positive destitution. Even as things were the contrast with the days of his strength and fame must have been bitter enough. In 1861 the greatest bowler in the world; in 1901 a pauper, wellnigh unknown, dying in the infirmary of a Liverpool workhouse.
When Jackson's career was coming to a close, George Freeman of Yorkshire took over the title of best fast bowler in England. In the 1890s, A.W. Pullin interviewed a number of old cricketers from Grace's early years for his books Talks with Old Yorkshire Cricketers and Talks with Old English Cricketers. Every interviewee considered Freeman to have been the best fast bowler they had ever seen. Freeman holds the best first class bowling average of any bowler with (virtually) complete career statistics, 284 wickets at an average of 9.84, strike rate of 35.47 and economy rate of 1.66. He also took four more wickets in match(es) where full bowling analysis were not kept. Here is a mini biography of Freeman, taken from Altham's book:
George Freeman virtually played only five years in the County Eleven, retiring after the end of the 1871 season to take up a lucrative business, but in that short time he won for himself the unquestioned title of the best fast bowler in England; indeed, W.G., with all his fifty years experience, states unequivocally that he was the best he ever played. If figures go for anything, his are surely convincing enough: in those years he played in but 26 county matches, but captured in them 194 wickets for under 10 each. In pace he was not quite of the extreme school, but his accuracy and deadly off-break were unrivalled for a bowler that could not be termed even fast medium. It is delicious to read his own statement that he always preferred bowling on The Oval because there the wicket was perfect and he could regulate his breaks, while the rougher grounds were apt to upset his calculations. But for his habitual modesty Freeman would have been one of only three players to appear both for the Amateurs and Professionals in the great match at Lord's, for more than ten years after his retirement from county cricket he was asked to represent the Gentlemen, but declined on the grounds that his form hardly justified the compliment.
