Family Background and Early Career
Ellison's mother's "records of family cricketing achievements show that his great-grandfather played against the Grace brothers in the nineteenth century and that his grandfather captained Derbyshire Second XI at the age of 60". Ellison's father, Peter, played cricket with him from the age of three and, aged just seven, Ellison took eight wickets for three runs for Friars Preparatory School, Ashford.
Ellison himself "gives the credit for his development into a swing bowler to Alan Dixon, his coach at Tonbridge School, who later recommended the young all-rounder to his own former county, Kent." However, Ellison was a prodigy, being selected for the Tonbridge first XI in the first year. At school, he was considered primarily a left-handed batsmen, and played alongside Christopher Cowdrey, who was to become his county captain in professional cricket.
Ellison did a teaching qualification at Exeter University, "because I didn't know what else to do – I never thought I'd use it ... I hadn't even planned to stay on in education past 16: I wanted to join the Royal Marines, but problems with my back prevented that."
Read more about this topic: Richard Ellison (cricketer)
Famous quotes containing the words family, background, early and/or career:
“A poem is like a person. Though it has a family tree, it is important not because of its ancestors but because of its individuality. The poem, like any human being, is something more than its most complete analysis. Like any human being, it gives a sense of unified individuality which no summary of its qualities can reproduce; and at the same time a sense of variety which is beyond satisfactory final analysis.”
—Donald Stauffer (b. 1930)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No doubt they rose up early to observe
The rite of May.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)