Lives in Cricket No 39 - Alec Watson

68 Selected Statistics none of them through lack of cricketing form, between 1871, when he first entered the side and early 1893 when he left it never to return. Watson was also a very economical bowler. In today’s terms he bowled 10,981.1 six ball overs and conceded 18,423 runs at 1.67 runs per over. While pitches could be rough and bowler-friendly at the start of Watson’s career, they did improve over the years. Yet he still maintained roughly the same rate over the years. Likewise, the number of maiden overs that he bowled, about 55% of his total of overs, whether four-ball or five-ball, suggests that scoring against him was very difficult. His strike rate was 47.60 balls per wicket taken, so he was a consistent threat to batsmen. Indeed, if one allows the modern convention of a five-wickets haul in an innings as being equivalent to a century by a batsman, Alec’s record of having one such instance in better than one game in three is rather impressive. Alec Watson was also a very accurate bowler. The modes of his dismissal of opponents are as follows: Bowled 655 (47.33%) Caught 570 (41.19%) Hit wicket 12 (0.86%) LBW 73 (5.27%) Stumped 74 (5.35%) If one takes aggregate of those bowled and adjudged leg before wicket off his bowling as being ameasure of a bowler’s straightness, that amounts to 728, or 52.60% of the total. The same statistics for some notable bowlers of around Watson’s time are: W.G.Grace 36.10%; James Southerton 42.93%; Alfred Shaw 51.95%; William McIntyre 45.29%; Edmund Peate 35.60%. Thus with more than 50% of his victims being bowled or lbw it can be seen that Alec Watson was one of the most accurate bowlers around, relying as much on his straightness as his break to take wickets. He was a particular threat to Derbyshire with five wickets in an innings twenty times, ten in amatch eight times; though admittedly it was usually one of the weaker sides, along with Sussex and Somerset. However, he seems to have found more difficulty against consistently strong sides like Surrey and Nottinghamshire and, of course, the Australians. That may suggest that his bowling was not absolutely of international class, though one must remember that by 1884 he was in his fortieth year, which makes his subsequent performances all the more commendable.