Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

further rain soon cost them vital minutes. This time their problems came from the pace bowlers. Operating in appalling light, but handicapped by persistent drizzle, 19-year-old Cuan McCarthy bowled superbly to take six for 43. Allan had managed only 9 on the turning pitch in the first innings. Now he came in with the score at 52 for three and he had made only 4 when he was bowled by McCarthy, to be followed in quick succession by Simpson, who had dropped down the order, and Evans. Catches had already been missed in the gathering gloom before Compton and Jenkins added 43 crucial runs; but both were out before the final eight-ball over was reached with South Africa needing two wickets while England required eight runs. Bedser and Gladwin were at the wicket, neither a specialist batsman, with only Wright to come. As Lindsay Tuckett came in to bowl, Allan was no longer able to watch. “Denis and I were down in the toilets,” he admits. After a single to Bedser, an agricultural heave by Gladwin eluded Eric Rowan, who had crept in from the boundary. Another single to fine leg was followed by two dot balls, then Bedser scampered through to level the scores. Gladwin was now back on strike but the next ball passed him down the leg side. “They’ve got to run whatever happens,” John Arlott told listeners back in Britain, as Tuckett prepared to deliver the final ball. And run they did as the ball cannoned into Gladwin’s thigh, Bedser just making his ground before the wicket could be broken. Allan was still in the toilets. “The roar went up and we knew we had won.” He had taken part in what remains the only Test match ever to have been won off the last available ball. The second Test at Ellis Park, Johannesburg was to start on 27 December. MCC’s minutes record that ‘it was decided to send Christmas cards to the wives of members of the MCC party.’ More important for the wives, no doubt, was the clause in their husbands’ contracts that permitted one free telephone call home, at the festive season. His team-mates would later envy Allan a second chance to speak with his wife when he sat in the control tower at Durban Airport to join in a St David’s Day broadcast in which Molly and Wilf Wooller spoke to Welsh listeners worldwide. Allan and Reg Simpson had contributed little with the bat in the first Test, but, helped by his fielding, Allan retained his place, while the young amateur made way for the more experienced Jack Crapp, when the side was chosen for Johannesburg. An opening stand of 359 between Hutton and Washbrook set a new world South African Adventure 49