Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

Chapter Nine Problems in Pakistan In 1955 Allan completed the double for a second time. Though his batting fell away, his 114 wickets were the most he had taken in a season. That winter he was selected, together with Maurice Tompkin of Leicestershire and Somerset wicket-keeper Harold Stephenson, as one of three older professionals, to provide experience on an MCC A tour of Pakistan. Led by his old friend Donald Carr, the party set off expecting to play most of their matches on turf. “We’d been told that, of the 14 or 15 matches we were going to play, 11 would be on turf and four on matting,” says Donald Carr. “When we got there we found it was the other way round. And Fazal Mahmood was the greatest matting wicket bowler there’s ever been, I would think.” It was always going to be a tough tour. Since Allan’s last visit four years earlier, the host country had won Test status and shared a series in England, so they were not best pleased to receive a side in which only Tony Lock could claim to be a regular Test player. The matches were marred by poor umpiring. Was it incompetence or bias? Donald Carr’s view is quite clear: “Well, I think I can say that all members of my team considered it was biased.” On top of these problems was a feud that developed between the two captains. “A.H.Kardar,” Allan mutters disdainfully. “Donald did warn me. He was so anti-British it was nobody’s business. That didn’t make for good comradeship on the tour.” Kardar had been in the same Oxford side as Carr and, although the Pakistani had been “a bit of an odd cove”, Donald had found him perfectly friendly. “I had expected a friendly series,” he says. The trouble started with a speech by the MCC captain at a dinner after the second match of the tour, against the Governor General’s XI in Karachi. Donald Carr had earlier been asked whether Kardar had had a nickname when he was at Oxford. He had replied that he was sometimes known as ‘the mystic of the East’. The inquisitor had misunderstood Carr’s answer and it went the rounds that 80