Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

Allan can look back on five long months travelling the length and breadth of the sub-continent. He had played in 19 of the 23 first-class matches - only Graveney and Robertson, neither of them all-rounders, had played as many. “It was a hell of a hard tour. I know I’m getting old and decrepit, but what would they do today? They’d all break down by the morning.” They had endured all manner of discomfort and put up with endless civic functions but, though there had been no coaches, masseurs or baggage men, their daily chores had been eased by having personal bearers at their disposal. For other members of the team one bearer was shared between two but, as senior professional, Allan had one to himself. “We were lucky to have them,” he says. “Your clothes got soaking wet after every session. They couldn’t have done better for us.” “Watty was a lovely man,” says Donald Carr. “He kept us going. A dedicated sort of chap with some Test and tour experience, and I think we needed it. The amateurs were all pretty inexperienced.” Tom Graveney echoes his vice-captain’s thoughts: “He was a marvellous senior pro, Allan. A lovely man, and a very good cricketer. Everybody respected him and took his advice. I remember in the first match of the tour I’d made a hundred in the first innings and I didn’t want to go in again – let someone else have a knock. Allan had a quiet word: ‘You go in where you’re told,’ he said. So I had to get my pads on!” Leslie Smith, writing in Wisden , says of Allan on this tour that ‘his Test average of 64.42 was the best for either side and India feared him more than anyone else. His grim determination and fighting spirit were a joy to behold.’ In 1952, the magazine Indian Cricket made him one of its five Cricketers of the Year, for his performances in the Tests, the only English player to be so recognised in that Indian season. In modern parlance, he was the ‘Player of the Series’ for England. 70 Senior Professional in India