Before the red flash, before television and before the modern endorsement contract, a letter from cricket’s first superstar gave a Robertsbridge bat maker a story that would last more than a century.
The letter is one of the foundational documents in the Gray-Nicolls story.
W.G. Grace wrote to Levi J. Nicolls after using one of the Robertsbridge craftsman’s bats at Hastings in 1894. The bat was new when Grace made 131 with it. He kept it, scored approximately 2,000 runs with it, carried it while reaching his 100th century and used it during the famous month in which he became the first batter to score 1,000 first-class runs before the end of May.
Grace called it “my record bat”.
At the time, Gray-Nicolls did not yet exist under its eventual name. Levi Nicolls had established his Robertsbridge workshop in 1875; the Nicolls business would unite with H.J. Gray’s company in the early 1940s. Grace therefore belongs not to the completed brand’s history, but to its ancestry. That distinction makes his inclusion more meaningful, not less.
Before the two names came together, the game’s most famous player had already attached extraordinary performance to one half of them.
Cricket’s first celebrity
William Gilbert Grace was born in Downend, near Bristol, on 18 July 1848, one of eight children of Dr Henry Mills Grace and his wife Martha. Cricket was embedded in the household. His father, an enthusiastic player and organiser, laid out a pitch in the family’s large garden and taught his sons the game.
Grace emerged at a moment when cricket itself was being remade. In 1864, overarm bowling was legalised and the first edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack appeared. Three days after his 16th birthday, Grace made his first appearance at Lord’s, scoring 50 for the South Wales Club against MCC. The following summer he made his first-class debut and took 13 wickets in the match.
The familiar photographs show the later Grace: immense beard, broad body, dark cap and a presence that seems almost to overwhelm the frame. The young player was different, a lithe and exceptional all-round athlete who could leave a cricket match, win a hurdle race and return to continue playing. His rise was not founded upon celebrity. Celebrity followed the scale of his ability.
From 1869 to 1879, Grace was the leading first-class run-scorer in every English season. In 1874 he became the first player to complete the season’s double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets. He repeated the achievement in each of the next four years.
These records must be understood in their environment. Pitches were uncovered and often treacherous. Protective equipment was primitive. Travel was demanding, schedules irregular and the distinction between teams less orderly than the modern county and international structure.
He is widely credited with helping establish modern batting technique, combining forward and back play rather than committing exclusively to one method. More broadly, he made the batter the central attraction. Crowds travelled specifically to watch him. His arrival could alter attendance, revenue and the importance attached to a fixture.
His image appeared in advertising and publications. His initials became sufficient identification. W.G. was not merely a great cricketer. He became one of Victorian Britain’s most recognisable public figures, perhaps the first English sportsman to reach genuine mass celebrity.
Eight days in 1876
The most overwhelming period of Grace’s career came in August 1876.
Playing for MCC against Kent at Canterbury, he made 344, the first triple century in first-class cricket. Two days later he scored 177 for Gloucestershire against Nottinghamshire. Two days after that, he made 318 not out against Yorkshire.
In three consecutive innings across eight days, Grace scored 839 runs and was dismissed only twice. A record individual score that had stood for 56 years was surpassed twice in the same sequence.
The 1876 season produced 2,622 first-class runs under widely accepted statistical classifications, along with 130 wickets. Gloucestershire completed its county programme unbeaten and was recognised as Champion County, with the Grace family at the centre of its dominance.
Numbers from early cricket can appear unreal because the structure surrounding them is unfamiliar. The most useful comparison is not with a modern average or strike rate. It is with Grace’s contemporaries. He did not simply lead them. At his peak, he occupied another category.
His Test career began comparatively late because Test cricket itself began late. Grace was 32 when he played against Australia at The Oval in September 1880, the first Test staged in England. He made 152 on debut. He would play 22 Tests, score 1,098 runs and make two centuries, appearing for the last time at more than 50 years of age.
Those Test figures form only a small section of a career spanning 44 first-class seasons from 1865 to 1908. Under the conventional statistical record, Grace scored 54,211 first-class runs, including 124 centuries, and took 2,809 wickets at 18.14. Historical classifications produce some variations in the precise batting total, but not in the conclusion. The scale was unprecedented.
The record bat
By 1895, Grace was approaching 47. His supremacy should have belonged to the past. Instead, he produced one of sport’s great late-career renaissances.
At Bristol against Somerset, he made 288 and reached what was then recognised as his 100th first-class century. During May he became the first player to score 1,000 first-class runs before the month had ended. The feat captured public imagination across the country. Collections and presentations followed; Grace was celebrated not simply for another successful season, but for overturning time.
In his hands was the Nicolls bat first used for 131 at Hastings the previous year.
That detail gives the Gray-Nicolls connection unusual depth. Modern sponsorship frequently begins with a contract and is then expressed through performance. Grace’s relationship with Nicolls has reached history in the opposite direction. What survives is the performance, followed by the player’s direct testimony that the bat had accompanied it.
He did not praise the bat in abstract language. He gave Levi Nicolls evidence: the first innings, the accumulated runs, the 100th century, the thousand in May. In an age before televised logo exposure, the greatest possible endorsement was a great player explaining what a piece of equipment had helped him achieve.
“My record bat” is therefore more than an attractive phrase from the archive. It establishes a principle that would shape Gray-Nicolls for generations: the reputation of the maker is carried into the world by the performances of the player.
From Grace to Ranjitsinhji, through Frank Worrell, Ted Dexter, Clive Lloyd and David Gower, onwards to Brian Lara, Robin Smith, Alastair Cook and the current generation, the company’s history can be read through those acts of trust.
Grace stands near the beginning of the line.
The man behind the monument
Grace belonged to the amateur age while helping cricket become a mass commercial spectacle. He trained as a doctor but repeatedly interrupted his studies to play. He represented tradition while modernising batting. He was capable of inspiring affection and exasperation, sometimes in the same afternoon.
The beard became a symbol, but the personality behind it was not ornamental. Grace understood his power and used it. Grounds needed him, organisers courted him and crowds expected him. Cricket’s emerging economy moved partly around his availability.
When he died in 1915, the country was already immersed in the grief of the First World War, yet his passing remained a national event. In 1922, memorial gates were erected at Lord’s. Their central inscription identified him with majestic simplicity as “The Great Cricketer”.
The gates now offer a striking connection within this inaugural class. Lord’s bears the name of Grace, whose celebrity helped turn cricket into the spectator sport of the English summer, and Heyhoe Flint, whose determination forced that sport to widen its idea of who belonged within it.
One represents the game’s expansion. The other represents its opening.
For Gray-Nicolls, Grace is the ancestral figure. Before the coloured labels, the red flash, the Scoop, the Elite or the Powerbow, there was a Robertsbridge carpenter making bats by hand. One reached the most famous player alive. That player used it to score 2,000 runs and make his 100th century, then wrote back to say what it had become.
A record bat. A piece of willow shaped in a Sussex workshop.
Gray-Nicolls CEO Richard Gray with Gloucestershire CCC Heritage Chair Wendy Body, holding the letter sent by WG Grace to LJ Nicolls, and the bat Grace used.
