Cricket Witness No 3 - The Daffodil Blooms

82 The Wooller Way did not improve when, soon afterwards, Young enjoyed a purple patch of form in the Middlesex side before winning the first of eight Test caps for England. In these modern days of litigation and lawsuits, Glamorgan would probably have had a good case for breach of contract, but it was a different era back in the 1940s, so Johnnie did not press things too much. As a result, Middlesex did not stand in the way of Len Muncer joining Glamorgan, nor Jimmy Eaglestone, another fringe player on Middlesex’s books, who also made the move west to augment the Welsh county’s batting resources. Len quickly impressed the Glamorgan hierarchy with his bowling repertoire, but during the pre-season matches and the early Championship encounters there was great doubt about which was his most effective bowling style. For a while, he continued to mix his off-spin with leg-breaks but, after some sage advice from the gimlet-eyed wicket-keeper Haydn Davies, it was agreed that Len should focus on off-spin. He duly repaid Wilf and Haydn for their advice by topping the Club’s wicket-taking list in 1947 with 107 wickets to his name. 1947 also saw the coming of age of Allan Watkins, the labourer’s son from Usk who had first played for Glamorgan in 1939. He had spent much of the War with the Royal Navy at Devonport Services, mixing his military duties with playing cricket, rugby and football for the various Naval teams. Indeed, his prowess at football led to a professional contract with Plymouth Argyle and, after being demobilised, Allan mixed his time during the winter of 1945/46 between working in a bakery in Usk and playing football for the Pilgrims. Everything changed however during the Spring of 1946 as he received an offer from Johnnie to play for Glamorgan once his footballing duties in Devon had ended. As Allan later recalled: “At the time I wasn’t really sure that I was good enough. I’d enjoyed playing in 1939 but I never thought anything would come of it with Glamorgan. Molly [his wife] encouraged me to give it a go, as did some school friends and my old headmaster, so I wrote to Johnnie and said that I was available from mid- June until mid-August. He duly replied that a short-term professional contract had been drawn up, besides telling me that I was included in the Glamorgan squad for the away match with Essex.” 2 It was an inauspicious return to county cricket for the all-rounder