Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

The dramatic win at Port Elizabeth set the seal on a wonderful tour. Wherever the team had gone they had been fêted. Amid much fine cricket, they had found time to visit Victoria Falls, to travel the Garden Route and to admire the views from the top of Table Mountain. For many of the party, Allan among them, there had been the chance to enjoy a first taste of golf, and there was much merriment out on the course with the likes of Jack Young. “I remember we were coming past the clubhouse and Jack sliced his ball straight through the window of a car. I thought ‘What’s going to happen now?’ Then the fellow who owned the car came out and he said, ‘I enjoyed that. Now I’ll go and put a new windscreen in,’ he said. ‘Fancy my car being hit by an MCC player!’” The team had enjoyed five months away from the ration-book austerity of post-war Britain and, as a gesture from a more prosperous nation, the Johannesburg Food Parcels Committee sent to the home towns of each of the players 100 food parcels each weighing six pounds. The Usk consignment went with a special message that one should go to Mrs Watkins, and most of the town’s older inhabitants benefited from the South Africans’ generosity. In similarly grateful mood, the South African Cricket Association awarded each of the tourists a bonus of £75. MCC were a bit huffy about this gesture, which had been made without seeking their approval. Minutes of the Cricket Committee record concern lest the amateurs, provided with a tour allowance of just £150, should have their amateur status imperilled and, for the professionals, there was to be a warning that they should all realise that the money would be taxed at nine shillings [45p] in the pound! South African Adventure 53 Allan prepares to drive off