Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

Postscript This book has been an attempt to place on record some of the deeds of Allan Watkins, and some of his thoughts on the game of cricket. Allan is a man of his age, happy to have played the game when he did – for all the modest rewards it brought him. “I’ve had a wonderful life,” he says, regretting only that his chosen career so often made him an absent father when his children were growing up. He owes much to cricket, but the game is in his debt for all he has given back to it. Perhaps, at first, he was a lucky cricketer. Few had achieved less than Allan when he won his first Test cap. Yet the scales were surely tipped against him in later years when a stronger England team could find no room for him in the mid-1950s. A man with 1,640 runs at 34.89 and 103 wickets at 15.82 in 1954 was not thought good enough to win a place in Len Hutton’s team to Australia. The nuisance value of left-hand batsmen has always helped win them selection. In the early post-war years England cast the net wide in the hope of finding a successor to Maurice Leyland or Eddie Paynter. Statistics suggest that none came closer to answering their quest than Allan Watkins. Despite his sluggish start in Tests, he ended with an average of 40.50 for his 810 runs. It is a record no other left-hand batsman chosen for England in his time can challenge. Of his contemporaries playing more than his 15 Tests all fall some way below: Tests Average 100s Ikin 18 20.89 0 Watson 23 25.85 2 Close 22 25.34 0 There were several others chosen for a handful of games – Smithson, Crapp, Dewes, Wharton, Poole and wicket-keeper Spooner, whose batting helped win him selection. There were those who came later in Allan’s career, Peter Richardson and Don Smith, and those for whom places were found on major tours, Ken Suttle and Vic Wilson. Yet no left-hand batsman of the post-war 107