Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

about three quarters of an hour and I scored about three runs. I was finished, I couldn’t run. My legs were gone completely.” Donald Carr recalls Allan saying that once the game was safe he was going to give the leg spinner ‘some terrible clout’. But, when the time came, “he couldn’t reach mid off. He was absolutely exhausted and he’d lost his timing for hitting the ball.” Allan had batted for nine hours without giving a chance for an undefeated 137, ‘a glorious innings which undoubtedly saved England.’ Contemporary record books credit him with 138, but later corrections have passed one run to Shackleton. Perhaps the players were not the only ones overcome by the heat. There were echoes of what might now be a man of the match award. Allan was recovering in the showers when a message came through. “Somebody said, ‘There’s a man outside wants to see you, Allan.’ I went outside and someone gave me a little plaque out on the balcony. I hadn’t a clue who he was. He just gave it to me and walked away. I can’t remember his name now, but I’ve still got it somewhere.” From Delhi the team flew to Pakistan, where they were to play five matches, two of them branded unofficial ‘Tests’ in a country still to be awarded full status. The players departed leaving their luggage in the care of the manager. Geoffrey Howard, meanwhile, set off by train for Amritsar, where he transferred 38 pieces of baggage into a three-ton army truck to complete the journey to the border and into a country whose Prime Minister had been assassinated only a few weeks earlier. The team were growing used to the rigours of travel on the sub-continent. They made many of their journeys in twin-engined Dakotas, quite often with the tour manager taking the controls. ‘The chaps are always jittery when I take over, but it is as safe as it can be at 8,000 feet!’ Geoffrey Howard wrote to his wife, adding reassuringly, ‘with the pilot at my side with dual controls.’ ‘Expecting a reasonably quiet time in Pakistan, MCC found the standard of cricket higher than anticipated,’ wrote Wisden after the first ‘Test’ at Lahore, where an unbroken stand of 259 by Graveney and Spooner in the second innings rescued the tourists. From Lahore to Bahawalpur they travelled by train, conforming to MCC’s wish that such journeys should be made only at night. For the amateurs it was pleasant enough in their air-conditioned coach. “The locals made the arrangements for the team,” Donald 64 Senior Professional in India