Francis Erskine Allan (2 December 1849 – 9 February 1917) was an Australian cricketer who represented Victoria in first-class intercolonial matches and made one Test appearance for Australia.

A tall, wiry left-arm medium pacer known by the sobriquet "The Bowler of a Century", Allan possessed great spin and a peculiar swerve which he claimed to have developed through his use of boomerangs and waddies growing up amongst Aboriginal people in the Victorian bush.

Winning the club bowling average that season, he was quickly recognised as a natural of unusual ability, and in 1867, aged seventeen, made his first-class debut for Victoria against New South Wales, taking a first innings five-wicket haul in a performance described by William Hammersley as "unprecedented".

[1] Allan became the mainstay of Victoria's bowling attack, securing extraordinary figures in a series of intercolonial victories, and played havoc with W. G. Grace's touring England XI in 1873–74.

[5] John was said to have been the first British child born in Heligoland, in 1808, and moved with his parents to Sydney, New South Wales, where his father David Allan, a Scotsman, accepted the post of deputy commissary general during the governorship of Lachlan Macquarie.

[6] After spending time at sea aboard a whaler, John overlanded with his brothers Henry and William to the Port Phillip District in the early 1840s to take up pastoral pursuits.

[15] Allan made his senior football debut in 1867 for South Melbourne, then a leading club of the metropolis, notorious for its brutal and uncompromising style of play.

"[18] Allan made appearances for other clubs, including Albert Park, which he represented in the opening season of the Victorian Football Association (VFA),[19] and South Yarra.

[24] Serving as a Carlton Football Club committeeman in later years, he freely admitted to other members that he still barracked for his "original love" of South Melbourne during finals: "I am red and white from head to feet, but blue is not a bad colour.

In it, he recalls "the many happy days" he spent hunting and fishing with Wilmot and other "blackboy mates", and the "wonderful lot of bush lore they taught to an only too willing pupil".

'On 29 January 1917, the day he participated in a bowling tournament at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Allan "contracted a chill" and was taken to Miss Garlick's Private Hospital in Flinders Lane, where he died on 9 February.