Frank Tyson - Early Life

Early Life

Tyson's mother was Mrs Violet Tyson (born 1892) and his father worked for the Yorkshire Dyeing Company, but died before his son was selected for England. As a boy he played cricket with his elder brother David Tyson, who served in Australia during the war and at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Middleton, where he practiced his run up on the balcony. Unusually for a professional cricketer in the 1950s Tyson was a university graduate and studied English literature at Hatfield College in the University of Durham. He was a qualified schoolmaster and used to read the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf on tour. Instead of sledging batsmen he quoted Wordsworth: "For still, the more he works, the more/Do his weak ankles swell". He completed his National Service in the Royal Corps of Signals in 1952 as a Keyboard Operator and Cypher. Sportsmen were generally retained on headquarters staff and he played cricket for his platoon, squadron, regiment, area command and the Army. He served at the Headquarters Squadron 4 Training Regiment where he controlled the movements of men transferring in and out of Catterick, but not very well. He abhorred guns and when he took his rifle training he made sure that he always missed the target. In 1952-53 he worked felling trees, which John Snow regarded as an excellent exercise for developing the muscles of a fast bowler and attended Alf Gover's East Hill Indoor School for cricketers. In 1954-55 Gover covered the Ashes tour as a journalist and advised Tyson to use the shorter run-up from his league cricket days, which proved to be a turning point in the series.