Lives in Cricket No 1 - Allan Watkins

Cricket has never brought Allan great riches. When I had first met the Watkins, Molly had described the ritual of laundering his kit in the Bridge Inn flat. “Sometimes he used to get home at nine o’clock at night and he’d have to catch the nine o’clock bus in the morning, before we had a car, to get back to Cardiff. So I had to wash his clothes, dry them by the fire and iron them so he could take them back next morning. I didn’t complain. It was the way it was done.” One day it was Allan who complained, “I said, ‘Darling, you’ve got the crease in the wrong place.’ This was about 11 o’clock at night. The next thing I was ducking and the flat iron hit the wall!” Playing representative cricket meant that Allan had been better rewarded than some, but it was his benefit in 1955, bringing in £5,000, that provided his only capital. Recognising the passion for cricket in the west of Wales, the nursery for so many of the county’s best players, Allan forsook the chance of a match at Newport and chose the Gloucestershire match at Swansea for his benefit. Though he speaks not a word of Welsh, the Swansea supporters still took him to their heart as one of their own. His match was badly hit by the weather. With no play on the third day, receipts were only £280, but the county’s followers rallied round to ensure that he received a nest egg worthy of his contribution to the Glamorgan cause. Allan’s first priority with his benefit money was to secure the best education he could afford for his four children, and by the time of his retirement from cricket both his sons were in private schools. Meanwhile he took the opportunity to buy a retail dairy business in the main street in Usk. By a strange coincidence, this was the very shop in which his mother had worked before the war, but now it was to provide an outlet for Molly’s business skills. “She was very able mathematically,” son Allen recalls, speaking in admiration of his mother’s commercial acumen. A forerunner of the modern delicatessen, the shop sold a wide range of groceries while specialising in cream, made at the back of the premises, and cheeses, which were stored in the cellars and cut to customers’ requirements. Molly was soon extending the range of cheeses and hams, and when Christmas came there were fresh turkeys in the shop. Judith remembers how busy it became and all the family did their bit to help, with ‘Auntie Eileen’, Selwyn’s wife, roped in to help. A delivery service was always available and young Allen remembers that, as soon as he passed his driving test, he was The Strain Becomes Too Much 92