Lives in Cricket No 39 - Alec Watson

24 Early Life in 1868 was David Buchanan, the namesake and Edinburgh-born relative of Colonel David Buchanan. By that time David Buchanan was a noted round-arm break-back (off-break) bowler in England and, although Watson performed well with both bat and ball, as a fast bowler, he was much interested by Buchanan’s style of bowling. The latter also appears to have been much impressed by Watson’s cricket. The two apparently got their heads together, and Buchanan found a ready pupil in Watson to become a slow to medium break- back bowler. There must have been quite a contrast between the country sportsman Buchanan, allegedly an excitable and irascible man, and the mineworker Watson, noted for his calmness and equable temperament. Still, according to Thompson, the latter was ‘eager to get to know how to hold the ball and deliver so that he could make the ball whip back or come quicker off the pitch than it had been delivered.’ Although the latter possibility has been scientifically disproved, Watson now found himself with a new weapon, one which at that time had only been developed by James Southerton and Buchanan himself. Buchanan indeed saw that Watson was an excellent pupil and one to be given the utmost encouragement, particularly as he showed that he was also a master of line and length. Perhaps itwas this encouragement fromBuchanan that gaveWatson the idea of a full-time professional career in England, instead of what could only have been a part-time interest in Scotland. At any rate in 1869 Watson was emboldened to seek his cricketing fortune in England. So the chance meeting with Buchanan was to have important results, and indeed repercussions, for Watson’s bowling action, and it is one to which we shall return. It may too have been the spur to seek a career in higher things. Be that as it may, it is to that career that we now turn.