![]() MJK Smith played rugby union for England, and Ted Dexter was only prevented by his cricketing commitments from playing golf for Great Britain in the Walker Cup. ![]() These were times when many county cricketers could be found on the football field in winter, and both Milton and Willie Watson were double internationals. The young batsman made his Yorkshire debut at 17, won his cap at 21 and was in the England side at 23, opening the batting against India with Arthur Milton. "If things had worked out differently," Wilson says, "Ken could even have been playing with me in the World Cup. A year later Ken was called up for the England Under-23s. But in those early days Wilson was an inside forward, making little impression, and he was overshadowed by Ken who made his first-team debut at 18, marking Billy Liddell in front of 50,000 at Anfield. In 1950, on leaving school, he went on the groundstaff at Huddersfield Town: "Cleaning the boots, digging up the pitch on Monday morning." He joined on the same day as Ray Wilson who, 16 years later, would be the left-back in England's World Cup winning team. There were 120 children, and one term we had 100% attendance." Regardless of what you were good at, Wally Heap nurtured it. We had to mark out the lines with sawdust that we collected from a local cabinet-maker. Then in winter we used to play football against the staff at the local recreation ground. You went in at break, then back at lunchtime. "We played cricket with him in the school yard with a cork ball and no pads, up against a dustbin," Ken remembers. Ken Taylor sketches a picture of his fellow double international, Willie Watson They were like many boys in Huddersfield, playing their sport in the ginnels that ran between the houses, and the young Ken was exceptionally fortunate to attend Stile Common School where the headmaster Wally Heap - with no key stage tests and national curriculum to worry about - believed in finding a boy's talent and developing it. Their father worked in the weaving trade, repairing looms, while their maternal grandfather was a ventriloquist who had a Punch and Judy show on Blackpool beach. His older brother Jeff combined playing football for Fulham with studying for a geography degree at London University then he went to the Royal Academy of Music and became an opera singer. And all the while he was training as an artist, first at the Huddersfield Art School, then at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. In summer he played cricket for Yorkshire. In winter Ken Taylor played football for Huddersfield Town.
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