Lives in Cricket No 39 - Alec Watson

78 Chucker? by the majority of cricketers; so it would seem that there were other suspects in that period apart from Nash and Crossland. All the correspondents seemed to despair of the umpires taking action on their own, or of MCC telling them to do so. In 1897 Pardon had attacked the action of the visiting Australians Jones and McKibbin, and in 1898 notes that the former had later been no-balled in Australia by James Phillips. F.R. Spofforth had written to Sporting Life , saying that throwing was on the increase, though in most cases, as with Bobby Peel, bowlers only threw occasionally; and there were many ‘who, while not exactly throwing, do not bowl fairly according to the existing rule. They “put” the ball, which is they throw from only one point, mostly the elbow’. That, in my view, does show that Law X was indeed inadequate and ill-defined, and allowed bowlers and umpires considerable latitude. However, in 1899 Pardon noted that a number of bowlers in England had been no-balled, particularly C.B. Fry, who had received ‘long-delayed justice’, after six years of illegal bowling. By the time that Pardon came to write his notes for the 1900 season matters were moving to a head, as more bowlers were no-balled. He reviewed the past twenty years of the throwing controversy, and noted that he had attacked Crossland from the start, and that Mold had been lucky to escape being no-balled for a dozen years; but yet again he made no mention of Watson. In 1901 MCC, at the instigation of the county captains, finally took firm action on unfair bowling, and Mold and others had to leave the game; and S.H. Pardon rejoiced in the 1902 Wisden . In his 1921 obituary on Alec Watson, Pardon noted that, ‘when the day of reform came, Watson had finished with first-class cricket, so it is impossible to say how he would have fared.’ That is fair enough, particularly in view of Pardon’s assertion that ‘all through his career the fairness of his delivery was freely questioned’. Yet Pardon had had ample opportunity both before and during his editorship of Wisden to question that fairness, but did not do so in writing. He simply observed that Watson escaped the ‘unsparing criticism meted out to Crossland and Nash’. So there must remain doubt as to whether Watson actually threw, and to the actual extent of the criticism of his action. Hard evidence seems difficult to come by, but there may be a clue in Pardon’s further comment: ‘There can be no doubt that his delivery was the cause of his not being picked for travelling elevens. Even when throwing was rampant here – I can remember three grievous offenders in a