Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

Chapter Eight The Best All-Rounder in English Cricket Molly was at the quayside when the tourists arrived back at Tilbury. Their ship docked late, and she and Joyce Robertson, Jack’s wife, had to endure a bitterly cold March night before they were re-united with their husbands in the morning. By evening Molly and Allan were back at ‘Ellis Park’, the home to which they had moved in the Ladysmith area of Usk and which they had named after the ground on which Allan had hit his first Test century. The returning hero looked fit and well, but throughout his career Allan lived on his nerves and never more so than after the long months in India. “It was a good trip,” he says, “but mind you I suffered for it afterwards.” Allan remembers a conversation with Molly not long after his return. “I said to her, ‘Someone told me I was going round the twist.’ She said, ‘You are! You haven’t sat down to a decent meal with me and the children since you came back from India. You’re always up and about.’ And of course she was right. And I knew I was dreaming. I threw my hand out one night and made her nose bleed. She said I was saying, ‘Catch the bloody thing!’ So that’s how it affected me in the long run.” There was a month’s break to restore the shattered nerves before the domestic season got under way and a rare chance for a holiday with the family, which now included daughter Judith. As they set off by car to revisit old haunts at Plymouth and spend some time in Cornwall, Allan had plenty on which to ponder after his winter tour. No batsman on either side had scored more than his 450 runs in the Tests. Might he now retain a place in the England team for the summer when, by a curious quirk of planning, the Indians would be touring England? Despite the recall of most of the established players who had wintered at home, the two batting successes from India, Tom Graveney and Allan, both found places in the eleven for the first Test at Leeds. They were to bat at five and six in a side to be 71