[11] Grace's entire life, including his cricket and medical careers, is inseparable from his close-knit family background which was strongly influenced by his father, who set great store by qualifications and determination to succeed.

[15] In 1850, when WG was two and Fred was expected, the family moved to a nearby house called "The Chesnuts" which had a sizeable orchard and Henry Grace organised clearance of this to establish a practice pitch.

[21] Grace recorded in his Reminiscences that he saw his first "great" cricket match in 1854 when he was barely six years old, the occasion being a game between William Clarke's All-England Eleven (the AEE) and twenty-two of West Gloucestershire.

Their mother, Martha, wrote the following in a letter to William Clarke's successor George Parr in 1860 or 1861:[24] I am writing to ask you to consider the inclusion of my son, E. M. Grace—a splendid hitter and most excellent catch—in your England XI.

[31] He won the 440 yards (400 m) hurdling title at the National Olympian Games at Crystal Palace in August 1866,[25] and claimed the silver medal in the quarter-mile event at the 1869 AAC Championships.

[45][49] It was his maiden first-class century and, according to Harry Altham, he was "thenceforward the biggest name in cricket and the main spectator attraction with the successes (coming) thick and fast".

[50] Summarising the 1868 season, Simon Rae wrote that Grace was:[11] Now indisputably the cricketer of the age, the Champion.Grace had numerous nicknames during his career including "The Doctor", after he achieved his medical qualification, and "The Old Man", as he reached the veteran stage.

[54] Grace wore MCC colours for the rest of his career, playing for them on an irregular basis until 1904, and their red and yellow hooped cap became as synonymous with him as his large black beard.

[61][62] The Grace family "ran the show" at Gloucestershire and EM was chosen as secretary which, as Derek Birley pointed out, "put him in charge of expenses, a source of scandal that was to surface before the end of the decade".

[71] MCC Secretary Harry Perkins had no doubts and insisted that it was Grace's greatest-ever performance with rain frequently stopping play and making the wicket at times "unplayable".

[74] As medical students (Fred started his course in the autumn of 1872), the brothers faced considerable outlay in addition to their living expenses, and it became imperative for them to make what they could out of cricket, especially the United South of England Eleven (USEE).

[81] Grace wrote that the tour was "a high point of (his) early years" and he "retained fond memories of it" for the rest of his life, calling it "a prolonged and happy picnic" in his ghost-written Reminiscences.

[103] There was speculation that Grace intended to retire before the 1878 season to concentrate on his medical career, but he decided to continue playing cricket and may have been influenced by the arrival of the first Australian team to tour England in May.

[114] The Graces managed to survive "a protracted and stormy meeting" with EM retaining his key post as club secretary, although he was forced to liaise in future with a new finance committee and abide by stricter rules.

[116] In his later years he had to pay for a locum tenens to run his medical practice while he was playing cricket; paradoxically, he had a reputation for treating his poorer patients without charging a fee.

Unlike the northern and south-eastern counties, Gloucestershire had neither the large home gates nor the necessary funds that could have secured the services of good quality professionals, a new generation of whom was emerging in the likes of Billy Gunn, Maurice Read, and Arthur Shrewsbury.

Recurring injury problems restricted his appearances in 1884, and it was in July of that year when Lancashire captain A. N. Hornby stopped play in a match at Old Trafford so that EM and WG could return home on receipt of a cable reporting the death of Mrs Martha Grace at the age of 72.

[135] In the second Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Grace infuriated the Australians by refusing to allow a substitute fielder for the injured Harry Moses, who also had to bat without a runner.

Morrah praised Grace's exploits as the "central episode" of what was, in any case, an important season—it began with the elevation of first-class cricket from a popular concept to an official standard.

[148] As a special occasion, the MCC committee arranged the 1898 Gentlemen v Players match to coincide with his fiftieth birthday and he celebrated the event by scoring 43 and 31*, though handicapped by lameness and an injured hand.

[79] It is evident that Grace "plotted" his own omission from the England team by asking C. B. Fry, another selector who had arrived late for their meeting, if he thought that MacLaren should play in the Second Test.

[157] That was his last "big match", but he continued to make occasional first-class appearances until 20–22 April 1908 when he captained the Gentlemen of England against Surrey at The Oval, where, opening the innings, he scored 15 and 25.

[171] Although the work ethic was of prime importance in his development, Grace insisted that cricket must also be enjoyable and freely admitted that his family all played in a way that was "noisy and boisterous" with much "chaff" (a Victorian term for teasing).

[118] With regard to Grace's batsmanship, C. L. R. James held that the best analysis of his style and technique was written by another top-class batsman, K. S. Ranjitsinhji, in his Jubilee Book of Cricket (1897; co-written with C. B.

[177] Ranjitsinhji summarised Grace's importance to the development of cricket by writing: "I hold him to be not only the finest player born or unborn, but the maker of modern batting (of which) the theory is in all essentials the result of WG's thinking and working on the game".

[181] Altham pointed out that for most of Grace's career, he played on pitches that "the modern schoolboy would consider unfit for a house match" and on grounds without boundaries where every hit including those "into the country" had to be run in full.

[43] Rowland Bowen recorded that 1895, the year of Grace's "Indian Summer", was the season in which marl was first used as a binding agent in the composition of English pitches, its benefit being to ensure "good lasting wickets".

[182] It was through Alfred Pocock's perseverance that Grace had learned to play straight and to develop a sound defence so that he would stop or leave the good deliveries and score off the poor ones.

[7] Grace's Wisden obituary said that much of his success as a bowler was the result of his magnificent fielding to his own bowling; as soon as he had delivered the ball he covered so much ground to the left that he made himself into an extra mid-off and he took some extraordinary catches in this way.

That such a volume should go forth under the auspices of the Committee of MCC is in itself unique in the history of the game, and that such an array of cricketers, critics and enthusiasts should pay tribute to its finest exponent has no parallel in any other branch of sport.