Alan Wilkins Cricketer
Alan Wilkins is a former English county cricketer, who played for Glamorgan and Gloucestershire. He was a left-arm medium-pace bowler, who took almost 400 wickets, before retiring due to a severe shoulder injury. Wilkins moved into Radio and Television broadcasting, initially with the South African Broadcasting Corporation based in Johannesburg, where he became Editor Sport of the English Radio Service of the SABC (1984-1987). In 1986/87 he was the recipient of three broadcasting awards: the SAB Radio Sports Journalist of the Year, the B & H Radio Commentator of the Year and the Nissan Media Man of the Year, with specific reference to his Cricket and Rugby commentaries for the SABC. Wilkins moved back to Wales in September 1987 to take up a presenting position with BBC Wales in both Radio and Television, anchoring the Rugby Special Wales series (later to become known as "Scrum V") BBC Grandstand Wales, all of the BBC Wales rugby output and cricket programming, which included Glamorgan CCCs home matches. He went on the commentate on BBC Network Rugby and Cricket. In 1994, Alan Wilkins was asked by the SABC to host the 1994 South Africa Cricket Tour to England, the country's first tour to England since 1965. He returned to South Africa in 1995 to commentate on the 1995 Rugby World Cup for the SABC, which included the controversial semi-final in Durban between South Africa and France. He then flew straight back to London to host the 1995 Wimbledon Championships for the SABC. Still based with BBC Wales, but now not on a formal contract, Wilkins was asked to be a commentator on the 1996 Indian Cricket Tour of England (Mohammad Azharuddin Captain) which was the start of his association with the Television company, ESPN Star Sports (ESS) based in Singapore. In 1997, Wilkins was one of the lead commentators for M-Net SuperSport in South Africa for the 1997 British and Irish Lions Rugby Tour, which resulted in a win for the Lions, two Tests to one. Later that year, Wilkins joined the ESPN comentary team in India for the ODI Series between India and Sri Lanka. Alan Wilkins was part of the ESPN Star Sports commentary team, known as A Few Good Men which included Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Harsha Bhogle and Geoffrey Boycott. He has been based in Singapore since February 2000. His television portfolio includes India's Cricket tours, all ICC World events and the Nokia Champions League. He has hosted and commentated on Wimbledon and the Australian Open Grand Slams of Tennis with former Indian tennis star, Vijay Amritraj since 1998. In Golf, he hosts ESPN Star Sports' coverage of The Masters from Augusta and has covered all the Asian Tour events and co-sanctioned events with Europe between 2004 and 2009. His golf portfolio now includes the OneAsia Tour, a rival to the Asian Tour in trhe Asia-Pacific region, with the latest development on OneAsia a co-sanctioning agreement with the Japan Golf Tour on a number of tournaments in Asia.