Lives in Cricket No 21 - Walter Read

65 “Have spoilt our chance you see!” “About my spike then” Barlow said “Just don’t you spike to me.” “You ploughed it up then” Spofforth yelled “Come! How would you have liked it? Our chance has gone all through that spike,- It’s just what I ex-spike-ted.” “You lie!” cried Barlow, then Spoff shaped Quite quick for the affray; All thought that spike would cause a great Spiketacular display. Then Read appeared, and said “Oh bosh! Of this spike we’re all full; To fight about a spike is not A bit respiketable.”‘ “I’ll go for you!” then howls out Spoff. But Read said – “No, not quite, I came out here for cricket, I Did not come out to fight.” 118 For Read, the tour had been a successful one. As well as runs against the state sides and matches against the odds, he had made 228 in the Tests at an average of 32.57, second only to A.G.Steel. ‘England’ too had recovered some self-respect after events at the Oval in 1882 and, unlike some later tours, especially the one fifty years down the road, relations between the opposing camps seem, notwithstanding the ‘spike’ issue, to have remained entirely harmonious. At the farewell dinner, F.G.Smith (Sir William Clarke being unavoidably absent) addressed those assembled. He asked those present to join him in congratulating Mr Bligh on achieving his highest ambition in Australia, namely, the recovery of what had humorously been termed “the revered Ashes of English cricket” (Applause). It was his sincere conviction, and he was not afraid to express it, that their visitors having wrested those sacred relics from their previous possessors, they could only be regained in the old country, and if Australia wanted them, she would have to go to the old country for them. 119 118 Bulletin 3 February 1883 119 Cricket 26 April 1883 Australia 1882/83 and 1887/88