Lives in Cricket No 39 - Alec Watson

30 The Rowley Years bowlers, but, while McIntyre may well have been of Scots descent, he was very much a Nottinghamshire man by birth and had played for Nottinghamshire between 1869 and 1871. Lillywhite’s Annual for 1874 noted, after Watson’s personal details, that ‘during the last two seasons he has come out very strongly as a bowler of the Southerton order, and we doubt if a better can be found. Is a good bat, capital field, and can keep wicket well, and is also a good fast round-arm practice bowler.’ The Annual repeated this, apart from minor updating, perhaps by the player himself, until 1886. Then he became a ‘good medium pace bowler’ on and off until 1894. Either the Annual had reviewed its ideas about pace, or Watson had changed his. In any event it makes no mention of an unfair bowling action. Of course Lillywhite , like Wisden, in its reports on Lancashire, may have been drawing on sources which were partly or wholly Lancastrian. In 1874 Lancashire’s county matches had been reduced to six, as they did not play Surrey. At that time counties arranged matches against any other county prepared to play them, Hence the number of matches played varied from season to season and county to county. There was no effective overall organisation that would give an ‘official’ county championship, though the press and others usually recognised an ‘unofficial’ champion at the season’s end; fixtures for the following season were arranged between the various county secretaries during the winter. As we shall be see, there were various reasons why a county would play, or not play, another in a particular season. In the first match, against Derbyshire at Old Trafford, Watson improved on his personal best so far by taking nine wickets for 118 off 53.1 overs with 5 maidens in Derbyshire’s first innings; the other wicket to fall was to a run-out. This was to prove Alec’s best- ever analysis for an innings. He took another wicket to complete his second ten-wicket haul, but in a losing cause. Lillywhite’s Annual notes that Lancashire were ‘imperfectly’ represented (Hornby, Rowley and Appleby were absent), while, according to Wisden, Derbyshire were ‘ably represented’. It would appear that Watson bowled throughout the Derbyshire first innings, and indeed throughout the match; though the published bowling analyses appear defective. In fact Watson never took more than seven wickets in an innings again. Of course other Lancashire bowlers, such as McIntyre, Briggs and Mold, would each have been keen for his share of the wickets, but, even so, the number of times that Alec took five or more wickets per innings during his