Raymond Watson-Smith (born 20 February 1940) is a former

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cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...

er. Playing for

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in 1969–70, he scored a

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in each of his first two first-class matches, and reached 310 runs before being dismissed.

Cricket career

Ray Watson-Smith made his first-class debut for Border against

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in November 1969 in the B Section of the

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. In a drawn match in

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, in which 1258 runs were scored in three days for the loss of only 17 wickets, Watson-Smith, batting at number seven, scored 183 not out, the highest of five centuries in the match. In the next match, against

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two weeks later, he batted at number six and made 125 not out in 145 minutes. Border won by an innings. He was finally dismissed for the first time in the next match against Natal B, when he made 2 and 19, and Border lost by an innings. In the fourth and last match of the Currie Cup season he made 25 and 53 not out in a draw with

North Eastern Transvaal Northerns (formerly North Eastern Transvaal and Northern Transvaal) has played first-class cricket in South Africa since December 1937. Its territory is the area north of Johannesburg, including Pretoria. For the purposes of the SuperSport Ser ...

. He finished the Currie Cup season at the top of the competition's batting averages, with 407 runs at an average of 135.66. He then played for Border against the

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, scoring 28 and 9. At the end of the season he played one match in South Africa's first

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tournament, top-scoring with 47 in a losing Border team. His captain at Border, Gordon Minkley, said Watson-Smith was a talented player but "He hit a lot of balls in the air and I think the word quickly got around among the other teams." Watson-Smith moved away from Border after the 1969–70 season and played no further first-class cricket. Watson-Smith's 310 career runs before being dismissed remained a world record until 2015, when the

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batsman Travis Dean made 347 runs before being dismissed. Dean was dismissed in his second first-class match.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Watson-Smith, Ray 1940 births Living people Cricketers from Cape Town South African cricketers Border cricketers