Edward Alfred 'Eddie' Watts (1 August 1912 – 3 May 1982) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er. He was born in Peckham

Peckham

Peckham is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Southwark. It is situated south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

A right-arm fast-medium bowler and a useful right-handed batsman, he played for Surrey from 1933 to 1949. Despite losing some of what might have been his best years to World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, he took 729 first-class

First-class cricket

First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 wickets at 26.06, with best innings figures of 10/67 in the second innings against Warwickshire at Edgbaston in 1939. He scored 6158 runs at 21.38, including two centuries. His highest score of 123 was made against a powerful Yorkshire attack at Bradford in 1934. The innings included four 6s and fourteen 4s and took under two hours, as did his only other century.

He was the brother-in-law of Alf Gover

Alf Gover

Alfred Richard Gover MBE was an English Test cricketer. He was the mainstay of the Surrey bowling attack during the 1930s and played four Tests before and after the Second World War...

, with whom he often opened the Surrey bowling. After his cricket career, he ran a sports shop. He died in Cheam

Cheam

Cheam is a large suburban village close to Sutton in the London Borough of Sutton, England, and is located close to the southern boundary between Greater London and Surrey. It is divided into two main areas: North Cheam and Cheam Village. North Cheam includes more retail shops and supermarkets,...

, Surrey

Surrey

Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...

at age 69.