Lives in Cricket No 21 - Walter Read

48 Read himself throws no light on his state of mind. In his review of the season in his Annals of Cricket , having mentioned W.G.Grace’s three centuries against the Australians, he blandly records: ‘I made a good show for England at the Oval. Going in tenth, I scored 117 runs in under two hours. My partner, Scotton, going in first, scored 90.’ 86 Whatever the reason, it seems that the innings was played in something of a red mist and remained memorable both for the batsman and the spectators. He had an ideal foil in William Scotton, the Nottinghamshire blocker supreme, forerunner of Bailey, Boycott and Tavaré, who had opened with Grace and was still there at the fall of the eighth wicket. Scotton’s first 50 (214 balls) remains one of the half dozen slowest for England and the ninth wicket partnership of 151 is still the highest for England against Australia – the only such partnership record to survive from the nineteenth century . Cricket summarised the partnership as follows. The chief features were the extraordinary defence of Scotton and the brilliant hitting of Mr W W Read. Scotton went in first and was ninth out with the total at 332. He was batting altogether for five hours and three quarters and his patience was invaluable to his side. He never made a mistake that we saw, and his innings was for defensive cricket in every way extraordinary – a performance of which he has thoroughly good reason to be proud. Mr Read’s 117 was as remarkable, though in quite a different style. He played all the Australian bowling with the greatest confidence, and his batting was distinctly the feature of the innings. He was only in two-hours-and-a quarter and everyone will be pleased that he so completely justified his place in the representative eleven of England by such a masterly display of batting. 87 Eighteen years later, in one of W.A. Bettesworth’s Chats on the Cricket Field , Fred Boyington, the long-serving Surrey scorer, at the time in his first year on the circuit, recalling the heat and large crowd, identifies the match by Read’s innings. One of the most trying times I have had was in the match at the Oval in 1884 between England and Australia – the match in which Mr Walter Read played such a grand innings, going in, 86 p 173 87 14 August 1884 Surrey and England 1881/87