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.

Completed Best Test bowling averages (Qualification: 75 wickets, career completed) Source Cricinfo
Position Player Lifespan Team Tests Wickets Best Bowling Average 5 Wickets 10 Wickets
1 George Lohmann 1865–1901 England 18 112 9/28 10.75 9 5
2 Sydney Barnes 1873–1967 England 27 189 9/103 16.43 24 7
3 Charles Turner 1862–1944 Australia 17 101 7/43 16.53 11 2
4 Bobby Peel 1857–1941 England 20 101 7/31 16.98 5 1
5 Johnny Briggs 1862–1901 England 33 118 8/11 17.75 9 4
6 Fred Spofforth 1853–1926 Australia 18 94 7/44 18.41 7 4
7 Frank Tyson 1930–present England 17 76 7/27 18.56 4 1
8 Colin Blythe 1879–1917 England 19 100 8/59 18.63 9 4
9 Johnny Wardle 1923–1985 England 28 102 7/36 20.39 5 1
10 Alan Davidson 1929–present Australia 44 186 7/93 20.53 14 2

Read more about this topic:  Frank Tyson

Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:

    “... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
    —George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

    “For the writer, there is nothing quite like having someone say that he or she understands, that you have reached them and affected them with what you have written. It is the feeling early humans must have experienced when the firelight first overcame the darkness of the cave. It is the communal cooking pot, the Street, all over again. It is our need to know we are not alone.”
    —Virginia Hamilton (b. 1936)

    “Glorious bouquets and storms of applause ... are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys. But to move an audience in such a role, to hear in the applause that unmistakable note which breaks through good theatre manners and comes from the heart, is to feel that you have won through to life itself. Such pleasure does not vanish with the fall of the curtain, but becomes part of one’s own life.”
    —Dame Alice Markova (b. 1910)