Tasmania University Cricket Club

Latest News (4th. July 2007)

VALE Allan Taylor AM.

Allan Taylor, a member of our first TCA team in the 1961/62 season, has passed away in Canberra at the age of 65.



Tony Harrison, vice captain of that first University T.C.A. team, sent word of his passing recently.

"You probably read in the Mercury (Monday, 2nd July) of the recent death of Allan Taylor. Allan was not only a very distinguished diplomat but one of the most talented players that the T.U.C.C. has produced. His cricket career was cut short by his recruitment to the diplomatic service and we were deprived of seeing just how far he might have gone as a cricketer."

Alan was born in Wynyard in 1941 (lots of Wynyard boys have ended up at the TUCC - Hills, Cox, Bakes, Sharman). He grew up in Launceston and was educated at Launceston Grammar. He completed an Arts degree, with a major in history, at the University of Tasmania. and was selected as Tasmania's Rhodes Scholar in 1963 and proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford, for further history studies. He was a keen sportsman whose considerable talent embraced cricket, hockey, tennis and golf.

The T.U.C.C. first competed in intervarsity cricket in Melbourne in 1960 and Allan was a member of that intervarsity team. The photo below was taken during that first intervarsity match.



The match was played in December 1960 in Melbourne and Tasmania University was playing against Melbourne University. Duncan Harris (Melbourne) is bowling to Tim Burbury and Allan Taylor is the non-striker. Bob Cowper, who later played test cricket for Australia, is standing at second slip.

Our thoughts are with his wife, Carol and three sons and their families and his brother William who still lives in Tasmania.

We include links to media releases from the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, the Prime Minister, John Howard and an obituary to Allan featured in the Sydney Morning Herald.


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