Alec Taylor - a short biography
MAJOR TEAMS: CFX Academy, Manicaland
John Ward
16-Mar-2000
MEET THE ACADEMY PLAYERS: NO 5
ALEC TAYLOR -- 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: Apprentice, CFX Academy student
FIRST-CLASS DEBUT: Still awaited
TEST DEBUT: Still awaited
ODI DEBUT: Still awaited
BIOGRAPHY (February 2000)
One of the older students at the Academy this year is the
Manicaland seam bowler Alec Taylor, who is coming through rather
late 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 having completed his apprenticeship he became a workshop
manager for Hunton Engineering, who specialise in generators; he
did a couple of courses and was there for about eighteen months
before opening up his own company. He has a business partner who
is doing most of the work there at present to enable him to
benefit from the Academy, although he still works 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.
This year at the Academy he hopes 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 next season, where he
expects to return after finishing at the Academy but with two
years of his contract still to run.
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'.
Alec plays a little rugby still, although he is thinking of
giving it up, after dislocating his ankle last season after being
selected for the national rugby squad. He has 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.