Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

leg and cut past the off stump. “My memory is of him beating the bat so many times,” says Don Shepherd, who reckons that bowlers who move the ball away from the bat are often unlucky. Allan talks of the batsmen he has seen on television and their techniques – Gooch and Atherton shuffling in the crease. “I’d enjoy myself there,” he says, and he agrees that his brain was always engaged whenever he bowled: “I never stopped thinking. I used to try to think what the batsman would want to do to me. And I had one thing in mind – to bowl it straight.” The complete all-rounder, Allan will be remembered above all for his close to the wicket fielding. Peter Walker, destined eventually to outstrip his 461 first-class catches, recalls how much he still had to learn when he first stood alongside his mentor. “It didn’t 78 The Best All-Rounder in English Cricket The Glamorgan leg trap. Allan is at backward short leg with Phil Clift square and Wilf Wooller at silly mid on. The bowler is Jim McConnon.