Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

matter what speed the ball came at him. Even when he was bowling and it was smashed back at him, it sort of melted into his hands. That was the thing that caught my eye about him, his ability to decelerate the pace off the ball in the matter of six inches or a foot. It stuck in my mind – how on earth did he do that?” In Peter Walker’s first match for Glamorgan, against Leicestershire at Llanelli, he stood alongside Allan in the field. Paradoxically they were in the slips, where Allan was never as happy as round the corner at leg slip where he could stretch out to catch the ball. It was also a first championship match for pace bowler Frank Clarke, who ran in to bowl before his young slip was ready. Leicestershire opener Gerry Lester flashed at the ball and Peter admits to hardly having seen it before Allan had dived and pouched it. “I was still trying to say, ‘Where do I stand? Am I in the right place?’ Allan just got up and carried on giving me advice, pausing only to catch this rocket projectile.” Allan made a close study of the art of catching. Despite his short fingers, he was blessed with safe hands, but he always preferred to have the ball coming to his left and positioned himself accordingly. He also liked to follow the flight of the ball from the bowler’s hand, where others were schooled to watch the edge of the bat. Over the years at Glamorgan his waiting hands were fed by a succession of in-swing bowlers and some of the finest off spinners in the land, the sharp-spinning Johnnie Clay, the accurate Len Muncer, the flighty Jim McConnon and the one he found the hardest of all, Don Shepherd with his extra pace. The demise of leg slips in the modern game is a puzzle to Allan. “They don’t seem to worry about the ball flying down past the legs. The number of times in the day that they play that shot! It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t take a catch. With a leg slip, what it does – it stops the batsmen from playing the shot.” The Best All-Rounder in English Cricket 79