Lives in Cricket No 21 - Walter Read

39 Chapter Four Assistant Secretary...You’re ’aving a larf The role of Assistant Secretary was a fig-leaf covering the reality of a highly paid professional. Unsurprisingly, the arrangement was not without its critics and detractors, both from the cricket writers of the day and the professionals alongside whom Read played. Rev R.S. Holmes in a feature quoted almost a hundred years later by David Kynaston in his book on Bobby Abel wrote – One county pays an amateur a salary of £250 for playing cricket, though this sum is ostensibly given him for the discharge of official duties, which he no more fulfils than I do. Expenses are also allowed, and of the most liberal order, besides a free pass between his home and the county ground. Say what we will, he is simply the best-paid professional in his county, though he comes out of the central gate of the pavilion, and gets an occasional touch of the cap from the professionals. Kynaston goes on to say that Holmes was almost certainly referring to Read whose original salary was £120 which, in 1883, was raised to £150. On top of this was a season ticket from Reigate to London and from 1886 onwards he also received an autumn honorarium of £100. Later he was given a match fee of four guineas. Kynaston also points out that, according to The Athletic News he received £1317 10s for going to Australia in 1887/88. 68 1881 was a significant year in Read’s career. He accepted the post of Assistant Secretary to Charles Alcock, a device to allow him to devote the whole of the summer to playing cricket for Surrey and representative sides for which he might be selected. There was nothing secretive about the arrangement. Like his contemporary W.G.Grace, he became a professional cricketer masquerading as an amateur. Unlike many of his amateur colleagues from a pub- lic school and/or university environment, supplemented by in- herited wealth, he was from a family and financial circumstances 68 Kynaston Bobby Abel, Professional Batsman pp130-131