Style and Personality
Don Bradman noted the similarity in footwork, "swoop" and aggression between Grout and Don Tallon.
Grout described Australian teammate Alan Davidson as his "bread and butter", and snared 48 of his first 100 victims from his bowling. He took plenty of outside edges from late-swinging balls. He hated keeping to off-spinners as the ball is often obscured by the batsman until it is too late; this is in contrast to leg spinners where the ball is visible from the time it is bowled.
"Asked by an Englishman if he'd attended a public school, he replied: "Eton. And drinkin'.""
Grout loved billiards, and met champion Indian billiards player Wilson Jones in Kolkata in 1960; the test team cheered Wilson in the World Amateur Billiards Championship, which was being held at the same time as the test.
In sports, prominent athletes often receive nicknames that then become widely used once they meet with popular approval. Grout's personality added his last name as a rhyming slang for a "Shout" (round). This poetic colloquialism arises in the context of drinking in a drinking establishment such as a pub, as in "And be sure to get your Wally Grout (shout) in." Here, a statement such as "It's your Wally" is a notification that it is the listener's turn to buy a round of drinks (a shout).
Read more about this topic: Wally Grout
Famous quotes containing the words style and/or personality:
“We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The great pines stand at a considerable distance from each other. Each tree grows alone, murmurs alone, thinks alone. They do not intrude upon each other. The Navajos are not much in the habit of giving or of asking help. Their language is not a communicative one, and they never attempt an interchange of personality in speech. Over their forests there is the same inexorable reserve. Each tree has its exalted power to bear.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)