Lives in Cricket No 39 - Alec Watson

38 match with Kent was ruined by rain. The same weather applied at Clifton, but Watson took six for 29 in 49 overs with 29 maidens in the Gloucestershire innings. The end-of-season tour, when Lancashire played two to four matches in quick succession, mainly in the south of England, was to become a feature of their programme. Such a tour cut down on tiresome travelling, and on expense: considerations which do not appear to feature in today’s computer-generated fixture lists. Travel would be by rail, with professionals travelling in the relatively spartan third- class carriages, while the amateurs went in first-class luxury. Later in the century the latter would have dining and sleeping cars available to them, though overnight travel would be avoided where possible. That was presumably one reason why county matches usually finished early on the last day. Watson’s batting average improved but slightly in 1879, while his bowling was restricted to about half of the number of balls that he delivered in 1878, partly due to the weather and partly to the fact that the efforts of other bowlers, particularly of course McIntyre, gave Watson only restricted opportunities. Others such as Steel and Crossland, the latter with a dubious bowling action, also had an effect. In all Alec had 23 wickets with five in an innings only twice; Wisden felt no need for comment. As Watson’s career enters the 1880s, it is time to review his progress up to that point. In batting he had scored 1,030 runs in 107 completed innings at an average of 9.37, with a highest score of 53. He had batted at most places in the order, but by the late 1870s he was more regularly in the lower middle order. Given that he started out with a reputation as an all-rounder, that record is perhaps a little disappointing, but, perhaps wisely, he seems now to have been concentrating on his bowling. Between 1872 and 1879 Alec took 347 wickets at an average of 12.06. That is a figure to which he adhered fairly closely to throughout that period, and beyond, thus showing a commendable consistency that generally placed him towards the top of the national averages. He had also taken 92 catches. The end of the 1879 season also marked a change in the captaincy of Lancashire. Edmund Butler Rowley, a solicitor then aged 24, had assumed the captaincy of Lancashire in 1866, five years before Watson played for the county. Rowley’s brother, Alexander Butler, had been prominent in the foundation of the present Lancashire CCC, as indeed had Edmund, and became its president in 1874; he too retired from office in 1879. Edmund played as a The Rowley Years