Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

“That’s what he always lacked,” was his verdict. “No heart and no guts.” No-one would ever have said this of Allan. He was starting to become a regular on the masseur’s table. Lunchtimes after fielding meant a trip to see John Evans, Glamorgan’s long-serving physio. “It was, ‘Pint of shandy for Allan in the masseur’s room.’ Then John would say, ‘Right take your trousers down,’ and he would massage my legs with ether to keep them going.” It was the regular massaging, Allan reckons, that helped to extend his playing career into the 1960s. All the time, unsuspected by the crowd watching the commitment of the feisty bulldog figure on the field, Allan was wracked by nervous tension. “I underestimated my own abilities,” he now feels, “and I had to make up for it by hard work. And there were these nerves.” He was always nervous waiting to bat, and it was the same when he first went on to bowl. “I always used to hope and pray that the first ball was a good one. But Haydn Davies was most peculiar. He used to say, ‘I hope they hit him for a four in the first over. Because they won’t get another one out of him after that for four or five overs.’” Perhaps perversely, aggression from the batsman helped to settle Allan’s nerves and stiffened his resolve. The key to it all was getting involved, so fielding wasn’t a problem. “I was quite happy at short leg. I enjoyed that. I dropped a few, of course, but I don’t think I dropped too many.” It had been the same in his days as a soccer player. “I would sit in the dressing room and the perspiration would fall off my chin. The Scottish coach we had used to say, ‘For Christ’s sake, Allan, stop it. You’ve been going for 45 minutes of football already.’ The back of my shirt would be wet with perspiration. Just nerves, and yet as soon as I got on the field and ran around, I couldn’t care less.” In the Glamorgan side of the 1950s Jim McConnon was notorious for a lack of self-belief when the chips were down, and it was Willie Jones, always in fear of his captain, who was said to be the one most wracked by nerves, but Don Shepherd believes Allan suffered more: “Willie could talk about it and have a few pints, but Allan bottled it up.” After the disappointment of 1956, Allan’s batting average for the next three years crept back over 30, never a bad figure on Welsh pitches, but the changing shape of the team meant that fewer demands were made of his bowling. Don Shepherd had now converted from pace merchant to medium-paced off spinner. A The Strain Becomes Too Much 87