Alec Taylor: a biography

FULL NAME: Alec Lionel Taylor
BORN: 6 November 1976, at Bulawayo
MAJOR TEAMS: CFX Academy, Manicaland. Present club side: Old Hararians
KNOWN AS: Alec Taylor
BATTING STYLE: Right Hand Bat
BOWLING STYLE: Right Arm Fast Medium
OCCUPATION: Professional cricketer

FIRST-CLASS DEBUT: 10-12 March 2000, CFX Academy v Midlands, at Kwekwe Sports Club
TEST DEBUT: Still awaited
ODI DEBUT: Still awaited

BIOGRAPHY (updated March 2001)

One of the oldest students to have passed through the CFX Academy was the Manicaland seam bowler Alec Taylor, who came through rather late in 2000 at the age of 24.

Alec grew up on a farm in the Bvumba Mountains, near Mutare in the Zimbabwe eastern highlands, where his parents moved soon after he was born. His father comes from Northern Ireland where he played some cricket, and he was fortunate in having a very keen cricketer in John Rawlings as a neighbour who gave him much help and encouragement. He remembers playing a lot in the garden with his father when he was young.

He attended Hillcrest junior school and began to play there when in Grade 2, winning a place in the colts team that same year, where he played with and against boys three years older than he. He played for the colts team for four years, and another in the school senior team. He played mainly as an all-rounder at junior school, but when he progressed to Hillcrest College he concentrated more on bowling than batting. His best junior school performance was against Hartmann House of Harare when he scored a thirty and took four or five wickets. He was not selected for the Manicaland team for the national primary schools cricket week.

At Hillcrest College he played for his age-group teams until in Form Three he progressed to the school first team, where he opened the bowling. After his fourth-form year he moved to Plumtree School near Bulawayo as a boarder, mainly to further his sport; Hillcrest was still a very young school and he did not find the facilities very good. Plumtree he felt were much better suited to his ambitions.

Alec soon got into the Matabeleland Schools squad, and also played representative hockey for Zimbabwe. His best school performance was for Hillcrest against Churchill, when in a double-innings match he took 17 wickets, eight in the first innings and nine in the second, for about six runs apiece. His most memorable batting performance was also for Hillcrest, playing his second match for their first team in Form Three, against a strong Prince Edward pace attack which included George Tandi, and he scored 56 batting at number nine. He also remembers a Mutare league game for the schools side against a Casuals team which included some top-quality players like Jon Brent, when he scored over 60.

In Plumtree, though, he was primarily a bowler, and was unable to play club cricket through the difficulty of getting into Bulawayo for practices and for matches at weekends. He was not selected for any national age-group teams while at school, but he pays tribute to the headmaster of the time, Mike Whiley, who gave him a lot of confidence and personal coaching, and helped him develop his bowling style, increasing his pace and improving his line.

After leaving school he worked on the farm for two or three months before moving to Harare in 1993 to start an apprenticeship in diesel-part fitting with Farmec, dealing with heavy-duty diesel equipment such as tractors, trucks and combine harvesters. His apprenticeship left him with little time to play cricket, but he did play a few games, mainly at a social level, for Manicaland and the Bvumba, and winter cricket for Harare South. He was unable to play cricket seriously again until he had completed his apprenticeship, in the 1996/97 season, when he began to play for Manicaland again, despite living in Harare. The Manicaland captain Mark Burmester then did much to help him smooth out his run-up and action, all of which developed his bowling.

He did play some Harare club cricket, playing for Harare Sports Club in the 1998/99 season in the Vigne Cup and then moving to Old Hararians for 1999/2000. In the national league he still represented Manicaland. He also played for the Zimbabwe indoor cricket side and had hoped to go to Australia for the indoor cricket World Cup. He bowled economically in club cricket without taking great wicket hauls in the 50-over game, and cannot remember taking more than four wickets in an innings.

When the Western Province team played in Zimbabwe at the start of the 1999/2000 season, Alec played a friendly match against them and did well. It was then that somebody suggested to him that he make a career in cricket and recommended the Academy. After talking to Dave Houghton about it, Alec applied and was duly accepted.

After completing his apprenticeship he had become a workshop manager for Hunton Engineering, who specialize in generators; he did a couple of courses and was there for about eighteen months before opening up his own company. He had a business partner who did most of the work there to enable him to benefit from the Academy, although Alec still worked there at times in the afternoons and evenings.

As a bowler Alec feels his main strengths are his lively pace and ability to move the ball both ways in the air, as well as move it off the seam into the right-handed batsman. As a batsman he likes to hit the ball hard and thinks it is one of his faults that he tends to be `a bit of a slogger' and needs to concentrate harder on his batting. While bowling he tends to field on the boundary but after a rest comes in to field in the middle-distance positions. He has a long throw and is a quick mover.

During his year at the Academy he aimed to perfect his bowling action, increase his pace and movement, improve his line and length, and work harder on his batting; he is keen to be known as an all-rounder rather than just a bowler. He has set his sights on batting at number five for Manicaland in the future. Unfortunately he was injured for much of the year with a stress fracture in the lower back and so perhaps did not gain as much benefit as was possible with his bowling. "My batting and fielding have improved tremendously," he says.

He enjoyed a good season overseas during 2000, playing for Bangor, near Belfast in Northern Ireland. He took about 45 to 50 wickets and made a top score of 147. "Getting used to different pitches there was nice," he said. "It's always good to learn how to play on different types of pitches and I think I benefited tremendously." This was where he picked up his stress fracture, though, which meant that he did not bowl much for several months after his return to Zimbabwe.

He was posted back to Mutare when he finished at the Academy in December 2000, but continued to play for Old Hararians in the Vigne Cup while turning out for Mutare Sports Club in the national league, when the heavy rain suffered by Mutare during the 2000/01 season relented enough to allow play. He played many of his matches as a batsman while his back was troubling him. By the time the Logan Cup came round in February and March, he was able to bowl again in short spells. He hopes to be up to full pace again by May or June 2001.

He plans to play for Ombersley, near Worcester, during the 2001 season, and playing in the Birmingham League. Dave Houghton played at times for the club in the past and it was he who fixed up Alec's contract with them. He hopes to train with the Worcestershire county second team, with the possibility of playing second eleven county cricket for them.

Interestingly he feels that of all the batsmen he has bowled to in his career, former Academy and Universals batsman Dion Ebrahim is the one who has caused him most trouble and impressed him greatly. In a recent league match Ebrahim scored freely off him and was harder to bowl to than most of the national players. He names H D Ackerman of Western Province as another he found it difficult to bowl at, a batsman who `picked up everything I tried to do'. He also names Steve Tikolo of Kenya as a difficult opponent. As a batsman he thinks Bryan Strang is the bowler he has found hardest to face.

Alec dislocated his ankle during 1999 after being selected for the national rugby squad, and has not played the game seriously since then. He played flank for the national side, but now cricket comes first and he would prefer not to risk any more injuries. He plays tennis, squash and hockey now and then, a lot of golf, and enjoys fishing and hunting. For a hobby, he likes to buy old motor vehicles, fix them up and then sell them; he enjoys horse-riding and chess.