Lives in Cricket No 21 - Walter Read

66 This is one of few jocular earlier references to what was later to become a far more serious sporting icon. During the 1883 season, in fact on the second day of Edward Pooley’s benefit match, Read was presented with an illuminated inscription on vellum and 250 guineas (almost twice his annual salary as Assistant Secretary and about three times as much as many people earned in a year) to commemorate his batting in Australia. The scroll has survived and is in the hands of the family. To Pooley’s benefit fund, the club added £25 to the £400 taken at the gate. Despite Read’s performances in Australia in 1882/83 and in the Anglo-Australian Tests in 1884, there was never any chance of his being selected for the 1884/85 tour – or indeed the later 1886/87 one. These were very much commercially orientated ‘professional’ tours, organised by Shaw, Shrewsbury and Lillywhite with the principal purpose of making money, and the professional- amateur balance was a mirror image of that which had obtained on Ivo Bligh’s Ashes winning tour. Australia 1882/83 and 1887/88 The vellum scroll presented by Surrey County Cricket Club to Read in recognition of his performances in Australia in 1882/83. [The Read Family]