Lives in Cricket No 39 - Alec Watson

Glasgow, at the then ground of the Clydesdale CC, for whom Watson sometimes played. Scotland was really a ‘XXII of Glasgow’ or a strengthened Clydesdale CC, who had arranged the match. They recognised that Watson was now one of Scotland’s leading players. The 18-year-old (had he been born in 1846, he would only have been 16) was facing George Tarrant, one of the fastest bowlers around, but lifted him out of the ground at square leg. Tarrant was the first to congratulate him, and Alec went on to score a very creditable 46. In the corresponding fixture the following year Watson scored 21 and 13 as All-England held out grimly for the draw; however, he apparently did not bowl. Nor did he do so in a similar match in 1865 for ‘XXII of the West of Scotland’, when he was dismissed for a duck in each innings by R.C. Tinley, though some accounts give him six in the first innings. At that time Alec was noted as a ‘fast sling bowler’ by John Thompson, but that was soon to change. The turning point came in 1868. By that time Alec was appearing as ‘(prof.)’ in a match for Drumpellier against Greenock, when he scored 41 and took two wickets, his mentor, the now elderly Johnny Sands, taking the other eight. Watson’s first engagement as a player seems to have been with a club called Easterhill on the eastern edge of Glasgow; it was soon to become defunct. It seems that there were no regulations to prevent him playing for more than one club in a season. So in 1868, as well as appearing for Drumpellier, he also appeared as a professional for Caledonian CC, then a noted Edinburgh club, with whom he toured to Knutsford and Bowdon in Cheshire. Like the Caledonian CC in Glasgow, it was to fall to the housing developers before the century’s end. Watson also went with the (Glasgow) Blythswood Club on a tour to Manchester in 1868, when he seems to have been attracted by the city and may have made some useful contacts. So Alec Watson apparently had no qualms about appearing as a paid player for whatever club was prepared to hire his services. At any rate the Drumpellier Club over the years had played an annual match against the Free Foresters, a wandering club which drew most of its players from the English Midlands. It was in effect a ‘Gentlemen of the Midlands’ side, and usually contained a few of the leading amateurs in England. Each year many of its players would come north to Scotland for the start of the grouse- shooting season on 12 August. Colonel Buchanan each year persuaded some of them to stop off at Coatbridge and play as Free Foresters against his Drumpellier side. Amongst the former 23 Early Life