Chris Read was the best wicketkeeper in England, but it did not earn him a long Test career. After leading Nottinghamshire to the County Championship, he was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 2011.
In the end it was a bit of a heist. Nottinghamshire may have been leading the County Championship for much of the summer, but by the penultimate day of the season their hopes appeared to be sinking amid the Old Trafford drizzle. Chris Read, the captain of Nottinghamshire, recalls the mood on the third evening of the last round of matches, which would produce one of the Championship’s most riveting finales: “There was a resigned air after two and a half days watching the rain fall in Manchester. Two weeks before we had a 20-point lead. Then we played some poor cricket. We lost two matches and it all seemed to be slipping away.”
On that Wednesday night there was a team dinner, at which all of Nottinghamshire’s options were discussed. Should they try to negotiate a game with Lancashire? Or should they go for the maximum number of bonus points? Read, unlike his senior advisers, always favoured the second course. “It was odd,” he recalls. “The game was on TV and the commentators – with more than enough time for discussion – did not even consider the possibility of us winning the Championship without winning that game at Old Trafford. Of course I had a chat with Mark Chilton [Lancashire’s acting-captain] and Glen Chapple [their club captain], but they were driving such a hard bargain that I thought we would be simply handing the game to them.”
Nottinghamshire, however, would benefit from Read’s England exile. Read knew in 2007 that he was likely to captain the county in 2008, so paid special attention to what Stephen Fleming, his predecessor, was up to when he stood next to him at first slip. “That was a fantastic education,” says Read, who tries to follow the same simple principles of captaincy as evinced by Fleming. Neither is the sort of captain eager to pluck a magical rabbit out of the proverbial hat.
The captaincy seemed to enhance Read’s output with the bat. In his first three seasons in charge at Trent Bridge he averaged 42, 75 and 45 in the Championship, often rescuing the innings along the way (his 75 was the highest average by a regular keeper in any Championship season).
In 2010 he stood down from leading in the Twenty20 competition, partly because he was concerned that the frenetic captain’s role was affecting his wicketkeeping in that format. “I love the glovework,” he explains. “I take a real pride in that. If I have a bad session or game I get down on myself far more than if I fail a couple of times with the bat.” There goes the purist, in an age when runs from a wicketkeeper are regarded as more important than silky-smooth glovework.
The Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack 2019 is the 156th edition of ‘the bible of cricket’. Order your copy now.
