Steve Watkin is a former Welsh

Welsh people

The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...

 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, with Glamorgan County Cricket Club

Glamorgan County Cricket Club

Glamorgan County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the historic county of Glamorgan aka Glamorganshire . Glamorgan CCC is the only Welsh first-class cricket club. Glamorgan CCC have won the English County...

 and England

English cricket team

The England and Wales cricket team is a cricket team which represents England and Wales. Until 1992 it also represented Scotland. Since 1 January 1997 it has been governed by the England and Wales Cricket Board , having been previously governed by Marylebone Cricket Club from 1903 until the end...

. A reliable seamer

Seam bowling

Seam bowling is a phrase used for a bowling technique in cricket whereby the ball is deliberately bowled on to its seam, to cause a random deviation. Practitioners are known as seam bowlers or seamers....

 who never suffered serious injury despite several lesser niggles, he played three Test match

Test cricket

Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

es in 1991 and 1993, and four One Day Internationals in 1993 and 1994. He was one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year

Wisden Cricketers of the Year

The Wisden Cricketers of the Year are cricketers selected for the honour by the annual publication Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, based primarily on their "influence on the previous English season"...

 in 1994, the only one of that year's five who was not Australian.

Life and career

Watkin made his 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...

 debut against Worcestershire

Worcestershire County Cricket Club

Worcestershire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Worcestershire...

 in 1986, taking the wickets of Graeme Hick

Graeme Hick

Graeme Ashley Hick MBE is a Zimbabwean-born cricketer who played 65 Test matches and 120 One Day Internationals for England. He played county cricket for Worcestershire for his entire English domestic career, a period of well over twenty years, and in 2008 he surpassed Graham Gooch's record for...

 and Phil Neale

Phil Neale

Phillip Anthony "Phil" Neale OBE was a cricketer who played for Worcestershire and captained the team to success in the County Championship in 1988 and 1989. He also played football for Lincoln City and Scunthorpe United...

, and also played two Sunday League games, but had to wait until 1988 for a second chance. That year he established himself as an important member of the Glamorgan first team, taking 8 for 59 (which was to remain his career best) against Warwickshire

Warwickshire County Cricket Club

Warwickshire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Warwickshire. Its limited overs team is called the Warwickshire Bears. Their kit colours are black and gold and the shirt sponsor...

, and claiming 46 first-class scalps in all that season. His best year in terms of wickets was 1989, when he captured 94, and in his career he took a total of 902 wickets.

He made his England Test debut unexpectedly in 1991, when Chris Lewis

Chris Lewis (cricketer)

Chris Lewis is an English cricketer, who played for Nottinghamshire, Surrey and Leicestershire in the 1990s. He played in thirty two Tests and fifty three ODIs for England from 1990 to 1998.Lewis was regarded as an aggressive lower-order batsman, fine fast-medium bowler and an able all-round fielder...

 pulled out on the morning of the first test against the West Indies. Watkin's bowling was ideal for Headingley

Headingley Stadium

Headingley Stadium is a sporting complex in the Leeds suburb of Headingley in West Yorkshire, England. It is the home of Yorkshire County Cricket Club, rugby league team Leeds Rhinos and rugby union team Leeds Carnegie ....

's notorious seamer friendly conditions. Watkin took five wickets, including those of Carl Hooper

Carl Hooper

Carl Llewellyn Hooper is a former West Indian cricket player and captain.-Career:He was a right-handed batsman and off-spin bowler, who came to prominence in the late 1980s in a side that included such players as Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Malcolm Marshall and Courtney Walsh and represented...

, Viv Richards

Viv Richards

Sir Isaac Vivian Alexander Richards, KNH, OBE is a former West Indian cricketer. Better known by his second name, Vivian or, more popularly, simply as Viv or King Viv Richards was voted one of the five Cricketers of the Century in 2000, by a 100-member panel of experts, along with Sir Donald...

 and Gus Logie

Gus Logie

Augustine Lawrence Logie is a former West Indies and Trinidad and Tobago cricketer and is currently an international cricket coach....

 in a match-turning spell in the second innings, in England's ultimate victory in the match, but he faired less well two weeks later at Lord's

Lord's Cricket Ground

Lord's Cricket Ground is a cricket venue in St John's Wood, London. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club and is the home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the England and Wales Cricket Board , the European Cricket Council and, until August 2005, the...

.

In 1998, Watkin was given a benefit

Benefit season

A benefit season is a method of financially rewarding professional cricketers that is used by English county cricket teams to compensate long serving players....

 by Glamorgan, which raised £133,000. Normally a poor batsman, he managed to average

Batting average

Batting average is a statistic in both cricket and baseball that measures the performance of cricket batsmen and baseball hitters. The two statistics are related in that baseball averages are directly descended from the concept of cricket averages.- Cricket :...

 a startling 35.66 that year, despite a top score of just 25, thanks to 13 not outs in his sixteen innings. By contrast, his career average was 10.83. In 2000, he scored 51 against Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire County Cricket Club

Gloucestershire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the historic county of Gloucestershire. Its limited overs team is called the Gloucestershire Gladiators....

, the only half-century of his career.

After retirement in 2001, Watkin became Director of the Welsh Cricket Academy.