Lives in Cricket No 39 - Alec Watson

77 Chucker? upshot was that the return match between Kent and Lancashire did not take place. This was even though Nash had rather dropped out of the Lancashire eleven, and the MCC committee had reversed a previous decision that Crossland was a bona-fide resident of Lancashire, and now regarded his living arrangements as not sufficiently qualifying him to play for Lancashire under the residential qualification. So Nash and Crossland effectively departed from the Lancashire scene, but Alec Watson remained to play for Lancashire, without such a potentially fierce critic such as Lord Harris being prepared publicly to categorise his bowling action as being ‘at all doubtful’. Also, Hodcroft in My Own Red Roses notes that Harris cannot have been impressed by the apparent claim by Watson’s critics that, because he could control the ball against the wind, he therefore threw. Such a claim seems to be a non sequitur. The next important cricketing figure to take a part in the Lancashire bowling controversy was Sydney H. Pardon. He was editor of Wisden from 1891 until 1925, though he had been concerned in the production of the Almanack for a number of years before that. Thus his editorship covered the last few years of Watson’s career at Old Trafford. It also covered the main part of the career of Arthur Mold, another Lancashire fast bowler with a dubious bowling action. As noted in Chapter 4, Pardon quickly had doubts about Mold, mentioning ‘a breath of suspicion’ about his bowling action in the first year of his editorship. Yet in 1892 Pardon made Mold one of the ‘Five Great Bowlers’ of the previous season. Moreover he played in all three Test matches against Australia in 1893. It was to be 1895, after Watson’s retirement, that Pardon got his teeth into ‘Throwing in First Class Cricket’, devoting eight pages of Wisden to his own and others’ views. Mold, Captain Hedley, Fry and R.G.Hardstaff were those most named as having suspect actions. However, Pardon notes that many would argue that, ‘while the laws of cricket fail to define what a throw is, it is illogical to punish a bowler for breaking the law’. He himself did not support that view, saying that a competent umpire should be able to spot a throw. However, that may still have been a factor in why Watson had escaped the public censure meted out to others. Pardon’s various correspondents by and large agreed with him that that there was some throwing, but that it was not widespread. The noted amateur M.C. Kemp thought that there was then less throwing than in the years 1880 to 1886, when there were ‘several’ bowlers whose every delivery was considered ‘more than doubtful’