Lives in Cricket No 39 - Alec Watson

32 debut, though he does for many others. Watson did not disgrace himself in this first foray at headquarters, scoring 29 batting at No.10 in his second innings, and taking five for 57 off 41 overs with 7 maidens in MCC’s first innings. However, he did not get W.G. Grace’s wicket, though Wisden noted that Watson ‘fielded his excellent bowling in excellent form’. There is no mention of any no-balls, so Lancashire seem to have been content to let Watson’s bowling action be open for inspection at headquarters. Watson scored 45 in a non-first-class match against Leicestershire, before returning to Manchester for the ‘Roses’ match, where he scored 31 in the middle order. However, that and his bowling were outshone by Hornby’s batting. In the return at Derby his main contribution was in opening Lancashire’s only innings and scoring 53, his first half-century. Alec again opened in the home match against Kent and did reasonably well. In the return game at Catford Bridge he bowled less than fifty overs in the match. He had not bowled much in the Old Trafford match either, so were Lancashire being wary of exposing Watson’s action too much to the gaze of Lord Harris, captain of Kent and a martinet as far as any unfair play would be concerned? Once again Lancashire relied heavily on McIntyre, Appleby and Watson, who among them captured nearly 90% of the wickets to fall to Lancashire in 1875; though this perhaps was not untypical of a time when counties relied on a relatively small number of professionals to carry the burden of bowling. In first-classmatches Watson took 28 wickets at 11.82, though with only one ‘five-for’. In addition his batting average showed some improvement at 13.33, being boosted by his maiden fifty. In 1876 Lancashire were engaged in ten county matches. They had been trying over the previous two years to increase their programme, but had found reluctance among the other first- class counties to give them fixtures. However, they opened their programme against new opponents, Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge; Nottinghamshire were to become one of Lancashire’s critics over the playing of professionals from outside the county, some of them from Nottinghamshire. Next, in the game against Kent at Castleton, just to the south-west of Rochdale, Watson started to get into bowling form with eleven wickets in the match, including figures of 48-16-61-7 in the second innings when he also performed the hat-trick, apparently to finish Kent’s innings. Ironically, in view of later events, Watson had Lord Harris caught as one of his second-innings victims. However, Wisden found The Rowley Years