Gloucestershire County Cricket Club League in 2000. Cricket probably reached Gloucestershire by the end of the 17th century. It is known that the related sport of "Stow-Ball" "aka" "Stob-Ball" was played in the county during the 16th century. In this game, the bat was called a "stave". See Alice B Gomme : "The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland". A game in Gloucester on 22 September 1729 is the earliest definite reference to cricket in the county. From then until the founding of the county club, very little has been found outside parish cricket. In the early 1840s, Dr Henry Grace and his
Fred Grace Grace was unquestionably a top-class cricketer through the 1870s but, like everyone else, he was overshadowed by WG, to whom he was especially close. Bernard Darwin wrote that Fred was the sibling (they were in a family of nine) to whom WG "was most devoted" and Fred's death created a "real and permanent gap" in WG's life. In his classic work, "Beyond a Boundary", C. L. R. James observed that the three Grace brothers were a "clan", unlike other sets of cricketing brothers. James concluded that WG was "close enough" to EM but he felt the death of Fred more