Alan Wilkins was born and raised in Cardiff and played county cricket for Glamorgan and Gloucestershire as a left-arm medium-pace bowler – with a career best 8 for 57 against Lancashire at Old Trafford – before a crippling shoulder injury ended his career in 1983.
Turning adversity on its head he embarked upon a career in broadcasting that began in South Africa with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), before returning to Cardiff in September 1987 to anchor BBC Wales’ portfolio of prime time sports programmes. By the mid-1990s Alan had gone freelance and, fol- lowing the end of apartheid, was reunited with the SABC to cover South Africa’s return to world sport with the 1994 cricket tour to England and the 1995 Rugby World Cup. He also began what would become a long association with Singapore-based ESPN Star Sports (ESS) by commentating on the 1996 Indian cricket tour of England.
By 1997 Alan had joined the ESS commentary team in India for the One Day International series between India and Sri Lanka where he was part of the commentary team, with Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Harsha Bhogle and Geoffrey Boycott, otherwise known as A Few Good Men. In February 2000 he re-located to Singapore to work for ESS and for almost 16 years enjoyed broadcasting cricket, golf, rugby, tennis and a host of other sports across the Indian sub-continent.
A return home to Wales in 2015 has reignited Alan’s love for rugby but as you’ll read in Easier Said Than Done, his love of sport means the shape or size of the ball is not an issue.
