Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

Hafeez Kardar was ‘the mistake of the East’. The captain chose to make jocular reference to this in his speech. “It went down very well at this dinner, I thought.” It was only later in the tour, when they had reached Lahore for the first representative match, that Donald Carr came to feel that his speech had been an error of judgement. The two teams were staying in the same hotel, where Carr was having dinner with other team members when Kardar walked in. “I was near the door and I said, ‘Hello, Hafeez’ and he ignored me and went on his way with his pals.” Wondering what was up, Carr finished his meal and went over to the table where the Pakistan captain was sitting with his friends. “I said, ‘Hello, Hafeez, nice to see you.’ He just said, ‘Hello’, only just, and carried on talking to his friends.” The frostiness persisted until the time for the toss. “As we started walking out, he said, ‘Donald, that speech you made in Karachi, it was the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever heard.’ I’d forgotten all about it. I said that we’d been friends at Oxford. He just said, ‘It was disgusting.’ So I said, ‘Sorry about it but, if you can’t take it, we’d better go and toss up.’ That’s what started the troubles that ended up with the umpire having water thrown at him a few matches later.” Between the ructions off the field, thanks principally to Tony Lock, whose 81 wickets came at 10.61 each, MCC won seven of their 14 first-class matches, though losing the four-match representative series by two to one. For most of the batsmen it was a disappointing tour, only Peter Richardson seriously enhancing his reputation. Allan had a lean time with the bat and took only seven wickets. He was now used less as a stock bowler and had to take the new ball in several matches after Mike Cowan had been forced to return home with back trouble, leaving Alan Moss as the only other pace bowler until Ian Thomson of Sussex arrived as a reinforcement. The Lahore match saw Pakistan’s batsmen at their most tedious. Having dismissed MCC for 204, the home side took 210 overs to make 363 for nine in reply, Hanif Mohammad occupying the crease for eight and three-quarter hours to reach his hundred. This funereal pace allowed the tourists to escape with a draw. MCC had been disenchanted with several umpiring decisions and, as they were entitled to do, they lodged an objection to one of the officials, Idris Begh. As they moved on to their next representative Problems in Pakistan 81