Lives in Cricket No 39 - Alec Watson

60 Slow Decline and Sudden End prowess down to the efforts of Hornby, whom he obviously liked and admired; though, as mentioned above, Hornby played but little in 1892, with Crosfield deputising. While Alec thought that pitches had improved over his career he regarded earlier ones as not being too bad. He was quite happy to bowl into the wind, and regarded his best bowling performance as being his 23-18-12-6 for the North of England against the 1886 Australians at Old Trafford. Watson felt that the only batsman who treated him ‘shamefully’ was H.T. Hewett, the current Somerset captain. Also he felt that with W.G. Grace the only thing to do was to bowl straight and ‘wait for an accident’. Alec also expressed his admiration for Richard Pilling’s wicket-keeping; one senses his regret that Pilling was now dead, leaving him to carry on their cricket outfitting business alone. He remarked that suppliers knew better than to try and palm shoddy goods off on him, for he had been in the game a long time. The business was still prospering, however, which was just as well, given the events of the next year. Watson, of course, had played with and against some notable players in the previous twenty years. On examining team lists at intervals throughout that period we find that Hornby played throughout Watson’s career and Barlow for almost as long, and that in the earliest days Appleby, McIntyre and Rowley were the most prominent of his Lancashire team-mates. Later came Crossland, Pilling, and Briggs. Eminent among his earlier opponents were Derbyshire’s Mycroft, Yorkshire’s Hill, Emmett and Lockwood and Kent’s Lord Harris. In the 1880s there came Yorkshire’s Ulyett, Bates, Peate, Peel and Lord Hawke, Kent’s A., G. and F. Hearne, Surrey’s Shuter, W.W. and M. Read, Abel and Pooley, while Gloucestershire provided Woof, and E.M. and W.G.Grace. Nottinghamshire, of course, could put out almost a whole side of familiar names: Shrewsbury, Scotton, W.Gunn, Barnes, Attewell, Flowers and Sherwin and, in earlier times, Shaw. It is little wonder that they were regarded as ‘county champions’ for much of the 1880s. Many of the same players continued into the 1890s, but Lancashire introduced Mold and Sugg, Surrey found Lockwood and Lohmann, and Somerset played L.C.H. Palairet and Hewett, Watson’s most feared opponent. As noted, Watson was an unchanging feature in a bowling attack that had changed over the years. In 1872 the other main bowlers had been William McIntyre and Arthur Appleby. Five years later McIntyre was still there, while Appleby and others bowled but little. By 1882 Barlow, Nash and Crossland were the main performers