Bill Lawry
Lawry was born in the Melbourne suburb of Thornbury. He was given the names William Morris after the early Prime Minister of Australia, William Morris Hughes. His father Alfred played amateur cricket until the age of 51. Bill never saw his father play, who was aged 47 when Bill was born. Aged nine, he played competitive cricket for the first time with the Thornbury Presbyterian Church team. He spent three years there, as well as playing for Preston Technical School. When he was twelve, he entered Melbourne's district competition playing for Northcote's fourth team, working his way up to the First XI by the age of sixteen. At the time, he was apprenticed as a plumber and attending Preston Technical College. Lawry was selected for Victoria's Second XI at the age of seventeen. He made a duck against the South Australians and did not see any further action for the Seconds for the rest of the summer of 1954–55. The following season, Lawry was recalled to the Seconds and scored 183 against South Australia.
W. G. Grace
Although there is controversy among cricket statisticians about the details of Grace's first-class career, it is generally agreed that its span was 44 seasons from 1865 to 1908, and one source lists 29 teams, the England national team and 28 domestic teams, represented by Grace in important or first-class matches. Most of these were "ad hoc" or guest appearances. In minor cricket, Grace represented upwards of forty teams. Besides playing for England in Test cricket (1880–99), the key teams in Grace's first-class career were the Gentlemen (1865–1906), All-England "aka" England (i.e., non-international; 1865–99), Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC; 1869–1904), Gloucestershire (1870–99), the United South of England Eleven (USEE; 1870–76) and London County (1900–04). Apart from the London County venture in his later years, Grace had firmly committed himself to all of these by the end of the 1870 season when he was 22.
Cricket in the 1860s underwent a revolution with the legalisation of overarm bowling in June 1864 and Grace himself said it was "no exaggeration to say that, between 1860 and 1870, English cricket passed through its most critical period" with the game in transition and "it was quite a revolutionary period so far as its rules were concerned". Grace was still 15 when the 1864 season began and had turned 20 when the 1868 season ended and he began his medical career by enrolling at Bristol Medical School on 7 October 1868. In the interim, specifically in 1866, he became widely recognised as the finest cricketer in England. Just after his eighteenth birthday in July 1866, Grace confirmed his potential with an innings of 224 not out for All-England against Surrey at The Oval. 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". In 1868, Grace scored two centuries in a match, only the second time in cricket history that this is known to have been done, following William Lambert in 1817. Summarising the 1868 season, Simon Rae wrote that Grace was "now indisputably the cricketer of the age, the Champion".