Lives in Cricket No 21 - Walter Read

76 1890 Before the county season got under way, Read played for Lord Sheffield’s XI against the Australians in their opening match at Sheffield Park. He was part of a team that lost by an innings and 34 runs after being bowled out for 27 in the first innings. Read made no contribution to that total; Grace made 20. More serious cricket lay ahead in the first year of the newly-established points- based County Championship which Surrey were to win for its first three years. Although WW was never again to scale the heights of batting achieved in the middle of the decade, he still remained highly competent and, in another low-scoring encounter on another Old Trafford ‘sticky’, demonstrated once again that his talents were not limited to fast scoring against modest attacks on good pitches. Unlike the equivalent fixture in 1888, the match did extend to a second day, but ‘nobbut just’ as they say in the vernacular around those parts. Twenty-nine wickets fell on the first day, there were fewer than three hundred runs in the four completed innings and three overs by Barlow apart, Briggs and Watson for Lancashire, Lohmann and Sharpe for Surrey bowled throughout the match. In the first innings as Surrey were bowled out for 69, WW stood alone amid the carnage. Briggs and Watson were very difficult and except Mr W W Read who made 30 out of 35 when he was in, there was not a double figure in the innings, which only lasted an hour and fifty minutes. 134 Lancashire were dismissed on the second morning, all ten being bowled. Lohmann had 7 for 21, to give him match figures of 13 for 54. Read played in both Test matches that summer, but made negligible contributions to England’s wins, by seven wickets at Lord’s and two at The Oval. Neither he nor George Lohmann was able to repeat their heroics at Old Trafford, the match there being abandoned without a ball bowled. The end of the season is inevitably a time for reminiscences and Cricket has the following one from the Hastings Festival when, recalling festivals of earlier years, I saw W W Read knock the ball out of the Hastings ground bang 134 Cricket 12 June 1890 Surrey and England 1888/97