- published: 14 Jan 2013
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Alan Philip Eric Knott (born 9 April 1946 in Belvedere, Kent, and educated at Northumberland Heath Secondary Modern School,) is a former Kent County Cricket Club and English cricketer, as a wicket-keeper-batsman.
He played for the England Test side between 1967 and 1981, and was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1970. He was particularly known for his habit of conducting limbering-up exercises at any inactive moment during a match. His major strengths as a batsman were the sweep and the cut.
On 6 September 2009, Alan Knott was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.
Inspired by his father, he made his Kent debut in 1964 at the age of 18. He joined a long list of Kent-created wicket-keeper-batsman.
He gained his first Test cap at the age of 21, having been named Cricket Writers' Club Young Cricketer of the Year in 1965. When he made his debut, it was against the Pakistani tourists in 1967. Batting at number 8, he made a duck in his first Test, at Trent Bridge, but didn't concede a single bye in the match. He made 28 in the second match, but didn't make the starting eleven for the 1967-68 tour of the West Indies, as Jim Parks was initially preferred. However, for the fourth and fifth matches of the series, he was picked again. In the first of those, he made his first Test half-century, a score of 69 not out, and he once again excelled at wicket-keeping.