Joe Walters was a leg break bowler in an era when they were still plying their arts, albeit with rather less success than had been enjoyed in earlier times, who played five First-Class matches for Nottinghamshire in the two seasons 1958 and 1959. When he first joined Notts in 1954 he was, at 14, the youngest player then to have signed for the club.
A contemporary comment from his first game, a County Championship against Northamptonshire away in June 1958, was that ‘Joe Walters from Bolsover was expensive on his appearance in the first team’. He bowled 18 wicketless overs for 73 runs; in each of Notts’ innings in their crushing 10-wicket defeat, he batted last and was not out without scoring.
Walters fared little better in his other games, scoring a First-Class total of 64 runs with a highest score of 21no and taking 10 wickets at 46.40, his one significant return being 6-139 against Oxford University. He was one of six players released by Notts at the end of the 1961 season, having spent the preceding two summers in the Second Eleven.
Joe Walters had suffered an injury in a fall whilst working at the local Steetley Works which meant his professional cricket career ended at 19 years old.
Joseph Arthur Walters was born on 12 February 1940 in Bolsover, Derbyshire, and was a right-hand bat as well as a leg break bowler. He died on 16 May 2021, just two months after he and his wife Marian celebrated their Diamond Wedding anniversary.
November 2021
Nottinghamshire First-Class Number: 415