Alan Geoffrey Thomas Whitehead (born 28 October 1940 in

Butleigh Butleigh is a small village and civil parish, located in Somerset. The nearest village to it is Barton St David, and it is located a short distance from Glastonbury and Street. Its population is 823. Butleigh has a church, small village shop, a ...

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

) is a former first-class

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

er and

umpire An umpire is an official in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The term derives from the Old French nonper, ''non'', "not" and ''per'', ...

Playing career

Whitehead played 38 first-class matches for

as a slow left-arm bowler and left-handed tail-end batsman between 1957 and 1961. He took 67 first-class wickets at 34.41 with a best of 6 for 74. His batting was negligible, and his highest first-class score was just 15. He made his debut as a 16-year-old in two end-of-season friendly first-class matches against

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

in August 1957; in the second of these matches, he played alongside John McMahon, Somerset's incumbent left-arm spinner, who was then sacked by the county at the end of the season. In 1958, he played in only three matches and failed to take a wicket, Eric Bryant being preferred as the left-arm spin option to bowl alongside off-spinner

Brian Langford Brian Anthony Langford (17 December 1935 – 12 February 2013) was an English first-class cricketer who played as an off-spin bowler for Somerset. He captained the county from 1969 until 1971 and his career tally of 1390 wickets ranks him third ...

. The 1959 season was Whitehead's most successful in first-class cricket. He played in more than half of Somerset's matches, and took 44 first-class wickets. These included three returns of five or more wickets in an innings, the best of which was six wickets for 74 against a Sussex total of 378 for eight declared at

Eastbourne Eastbourne () is a town and seaside resort in East Sussex, on the south coast of England, east of Brighton and south of London. Eastbourne is immediately east of Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in Great Britain and part of the la ...

, with centuries for Test batsmen Alan Oakman and

Ted Dexter Edward Ralph Dexter, (15 May 1935 – 25 August 2021) was an England international cricketer. An aggressive middle-order batsman of ferocious power and a right-arm medium bowler, he captained Sussex and England in the early 1960s. He captaine ...

. Later in the same month of July 1959, he took five for 33 in the first innings against

Northamptonshire Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It is ...

Taunton Taunton () is the county town of Somerset, England, with a 2011 population of 69,570. Its thousand-year history includes a 10th-century monastic foundation, Taunton Castle, which later became a priory. The Normans built a castle owned by the ...

and followed that with three for 57 off 41 overs in the second innings after Somerset enforced the

follow-on In the game of cricket, a team who batted second and scored significantly fewer runs than the team who batted first may be forced to follow-on: to take their second innings immediately after their first. The follow-on can be enforced by the team ...

. Whitehead played for Somerset regularly again in the first half of the 1960 season, but he took only 17 wickets at the high average of 43.13. But he lost his place in the side in July when the amateur leg-spin bowler and schoolmaster,

Colin Atkinson Colin Ronald Michael Atkinson (23 July 1931 – 25 June 1991) was an English first-class cricketer, schoolmaster and the headmaster of Millfield School. Education Born at Thornaby, Yorkshire, Atkinson was educated at St. Mary's Grammar Sc ...

, became available to be the second spin bowler in the side alongside Langford. Atkinson took more wickets than Whitehead in 1960 and also made useful runs in the lower order. In 1961, Atkinson was available to Somerset for the whole season, and Whitehead played only one first-team match: in this game, he distinguished himself for the only time in his career with the bat, hanging on with fellow "non-batsman" Ken Biddulph for 35 minutes without scoring at the end of the game to earn Somerset a draw. Though he was a regular member of the Somerset second team which won the

Minor Counties The National Counties, known as the Minor Counties before 2020, are the cricketing counties of England and Wales that do not have first-class status. The game is administered by the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), which comes unde ...

Championship In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match system In this system ...

for the first time in 1961, he left the county staff at the end of the season. He did not play first-class cricket again. He was still only 20 years old.

Umpiring career

Whitehead became a first-class umpire in 1970 and then stood in more than 600 first-class games before his retirement at the end of the 2005 season. He umpired 5 tests in England, between his first, the India Test at the Oval in 1982 and Pakistan's match at Edgbaston in 1987. He also umpired 14 One Day Internationals between 1979 and 2001.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Whitehead, Alan 1940 births Living people English Test cricket umpires English One Day International cricket umpires English cricketers Somerset cricketers People from Mendip District

Playing career

Umpiring career

See also

References