Alan Whitehead

Alan Geoffrey Thomas Whitehead (born 28 October 1940 in Butleigh, Somerset) is a former first-class cricketer and umpire.

Playing career Whitehead played 38 first-class matches for Somerset 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 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.

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. Later in the same month of July 1959, he took five for 33 in the first innings against Northamptonshire at Taunton and followed that with three for 57 off 41 overs in the second innings after Somerset enforced the follow-on.

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. Though he was a regular member of the Somerset second team which won the Minor Counties Championship 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.

Wells Cathedral School Alan Whitehead was a highly appreciated Cricket Coach at Wells Cathedral School 1962–70. In 1967 he was also a founding player in The Willows, a local cricket team for Cathedral School Staff and local people which used School pitches and headquartered in The Fountain Inn in Wells.

Alan has since returned many times over the years to umpire WCS First XI and Willows matches.

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.