In an article in the 2010 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack he is identified as "an author, publisher and captain of the Winsley Third XI".
[4] Chalke's cricket-writing career began after he received some coaching from the former Somerset player Ken Biddulph in the early 1990s.
His collaboration with Geoffrey Howard, At the Heart of English Cricket, won the 2002 Cricket Society Book of the Year Award, and he has twice won the Wisden Book of the Year award: in 2004 with No Coward Soul (his biography of Bob Appleyard, co-written with Derek Hodgson) and in 2008 with Tom Cartwright – The Flame Still Burns.
[7] Summer's Crown, his history of the county championship, was the Cricket Writers Club's Book of the Year in 2015.
[10] Other authors include David Foot, John Barclay, Fred Rumsey, Peter Walker, Mark Wagh, Anthony Gibson and Simon Lister.
[15] In a profile in the 2020 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, Richard Whitehead wrote that 'Chalke's story goes deeper than the acclaim of critics or the collecting of awards.