Lives in Cricket No 39 - Alec Watson

Beyond First-Class Cricket 92 and 1885 his walrus moustache had been neatly trimmed. Later team photographs reveal him neatly clad cricketer, soon to become the equally dapper business man. A photograph in the Coatbridge Leader obituary (unfortunately too poor to be reproduced) shows him in later life as very much the well-dressed, bowler-hatted, trimly moustached man of business. It reported Alec as having died in Manchester on 26 October, 1920, ‘in his 76 th year, full of honours and renown .... His memory will be affectionately cherished as long as cricket is played at Drumpellier’; and it still is. There was also a short obituary to Watson in Manchester Guardian , which mentions that A.N. Hornby wrote of him as one who ‘for 21 years did wonderful service, and for length and ability to keep up there may have been better, but I have not seen them.’ The Times also published a short obituary, which mentions the controversy over his action and his not going to Australia; some of the phraseology suggests that its author was Sydney Pardon. The Manchester Guardian also reported on 30 October on Watson’s funeral the previous day at the Southern Cemetery in Manchester. The chief mourners were his three sons, George, Alexander and Robert; and the Lancashire CCC was strongly represented by Sketch by author of Alec Watson in old age; based on an indistinct photograph in his obituary in the Coatbridge Leader of 7 November 1920.