Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

He recalls the financial struggle to manage on thirty shillings a week, as his parents helped scrape together the price of playing kit. “You had to buy all your own stuff, your pads and your trousers. There was nothing given to you.” One stroke of luck for Allan was that his friend Phil Clift, whose father was a photographer and owned a small shop in Usk, had been prosperous enough to buy a car. So the pair could share the cost of petrol for the journeys to Cardiff. Early elation at becoming a professional cricketer soon gave way to frustration and despair as Allan discovered that his successes on village pitches were no guarantee of coping at a higher level. ‘I realised very quickly that I had a great deal to learn about the game,’ he was to write years later in the Western Mail . ‘It was one thing to play for Usk and look a winner, but quite a different kettle of fish to hold one’s own with experienced professionals. I was beginning to wonder whether I knew anything about the game because it appeared I was doing everything wrong.’ Throughout life Allan has always been plagued by self-doubt. “I lack confidence in everything,” he will say even today. So it was when he first found himself mixing with established players at Glamorgan. “If I was in the nets I would stand back and I wouldn’t bowl until someone said, ‘Come on, Allan, have a bowl.’” As a young professional Allan was expected to run errands for the senior players and his duties included taking charge of the team’s kit when they returned late in the evening from away fixtures. “More than once I missed the last bus from Newport to Usk and had to walk back hoping I could hitch a lift. And I remember Bill Hitch leaving me at Caerleon with eight miles to walk.” With George Lavis having departed to take up a professional appointment in Scotland, Allan singles out Arnold Dyson as the senior player whose encouragement kept him going through these difficult early days, but it was still with some misgivings that he returned to cricket in 1939. Throughout the 1930s there was a meagre budget for a playing staff at Glamorgan and most summers saw a struggle at some stage to find eleven men to take the field. This was the position for the opening championship match of 1939. Wilf Wooller and Johnnie Clay were unavailable and there had been a delay in obtaining the registration of Peter Judge, who was to join from Middlesex as an opening bowler but who was now consigned to the 14 Early Days at Usk