Lives in Cricket No 21 - Walter Read

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Yorkshire-born Keith Booth , a graduate of the University of Reading, has completed almost two decades with Surrey County Cricket Club, mostly as 1st XI scorer. In addition, he is approaching a hundred international matches and in between times, with the help of his wife Jennifer, who is 2nd XI scorer, researches and writes about the county’s giants of earlier years. So, Walter Read follows Edward Pooley, Charles Alcock, George Lohmann and Ernie Hayes (No.8 in the Lives in Cricket series) into his canon of Surrey biography. They were preceded by Atherton’s Progress , a diary of the 1994/95 West Indies tour when Keith acted as scorer to the BBC’s Test Match Special team and Knowing the Score: the Past, Present and Future of Cricket Scoring , making seven books in all. They will be followed in 2012 by a biography of Tom Richardson, some would argue the greatest fast bowler of all time. Keith’s earlier career was in retailing and university administration at a time when universities were self-managing and less subject to government control. The Father of Modern Sport: the Life and Times of Charles W. Alcock was short-listed for the Cricket Society’s Book of the Year Award for 2002. George Lohmann, Pioneer Professional went one better and won it five years later.