Reg Read

Reginald John Read (8 June 1886 – 1 March 1974) was a New Zealand medium-pace bowler who played first-class cricket for Canterbury from 1904–05 to 1937–38.

Playing career Read made his first-class debut in Christchurch against the Australians at the age of 18 in February 1905, batting at number 11 and bowling only one over.

He had to wait another 11 years for his next match. In 1917–18, for his Canterbury club Lancaster Park, he took 92 wickets in eight matches for 781 runs with his accurate medium-pace bowling, and he returned to the Canterbury side at the age of 31. The Plunket Shield was still in its wartime hiatus, but there were several inter-provincial friendly matches. In his first match, against Otago, he took 3 for 58 and 2 for 35 (bowling throughout the innings) and made 18 and 34 not out to help Canterbury to victory. In the next match he bowled through the entire Wellington first innings, taking 4 for 43 off 23 overs. He remained in the Canterbury side, opening the bowling for more than ten years until his early forties.

In 1920–21, in what proved to be Southland's second-last first-class match, Read took 7 for 35 and 7 for 24, bowling unchanged throughout the two innings. In 1922–23, when Canterbury won the Plunket Shield, he was the leading bowler in the competition, with 20 wickets at an average of 18.40. In the victory over Auckland that season he made his highest score, 50, then took 5 for 53 and 3 for 81.

No one in the 1926–27 Plunket Shield season bettered Read's tally of 19 wickets, but at 40 he was overlooked when the team for New Zealand's first tour of England in 1927 was chosen. He was selected to play for New Zealand against the touring Australians in 1927–28, but took only two wickets in the two matches. By the time New Zealand played Test cricket for the first time, in 1930, he was 43 and no longer playing for Canterbury.

Read kept playing for Lancaster Park, on his way to a tally of around 1800 wickets in club cricket.

In his first first-class match Read had played against Syd Gregory, whose first-class career began in 1890; in his last match he played against Merv Wallace, whose first-class career ended in 1961. he died in his sleep at his nursing home in the Christchurch suburb of Mount Pleasant in March 1974, aged 87.