Frank Typhoon Tyson, Lancashire's loss, Northants gain

Ok, I'm taking a few liberties here, so indulge me, Frank Tyson was a Lancastrian, not a Northamptonian but he played for Northants CCC and was very loyal to them, so that's good enough for me,

​Oh, and he played for England, very successfully it has to be said, his figures of 7 for 27 against Australia in the 1954/55 Test Series at the MCG  confirmed him as a quality fast bowler, and a man who took his profession very seriously.

Of his time as a player for the county he once said, "Not one player has derived more enjoyment than me out of Northants cricket," 

Frank only ended up playing for the county team because of his late arrival at a second eleven game for Lancashire, so their loss was so to speak, our gain, Northants have never been blessed with a surfeit of talent. They have had some good and loyal players but have always been a bit of a cinderella team, in F.H Tyson they had a bit of a gem.

​Why am I writing about the late Mr Tyson ?, partly because I'm a cricket nut, partly because England have just played a Test Match and been soundly thrashed, by it has to be said a West Indian side who outplayed them in every respect, and because he was one of Northants best ever players and deserves to be remembered.

The sight of a genuinely fast bowler is something you can only appreciate when seen live, on the television it still looks impressive, but live you get a sense of what it must be like waiting at the other end of the strip, wondering what the ball will do.

If protective kit is needed in any game cricket is surely it, I know some say "watching cricket is like watching paint dry" I would have said the same some years back, but the first time I saw a live game, funnily enough the West Indies touring side playing at Northants in the early 1980's, I was hooked.

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What was special about Frank Tyson ?, well sheer pace, which batsmen generally don't like, and interestingly apart from that Frank was an educated man who liked to quote Shakespeare and Wordsworth to opposing batsmen.

Sledging or its more contemporary manifestation "mental disintegration", we should differentiate between the two, has been around in cricket for a very long time, some very funny exchanges have taken place over the years between some great players.

One of my favourite conversations took place between that attacking England player Ian (Beefy) Botham, a man not known to back down or shy away from confrontation, and Rod "Iron gloves"  Marsh of Australia, another combative player.

Marsh to Botham, "So how's your wife and my kids?".

Botham to Marsh, " The wife is fine, but the kids are retarded".

Now you just don't get quality like that anymore, 

There are loads of other great exchanges too numerous to mention, the players of today still like to try to distract their opponents with chatter but don't seem to have the sharp wit required,

Jimmy Anderson batting as a tail ender was once told by Michael Clarke "Get ready for a broken &@cking arm".

Which in my humble opinion doesn't really cut the mustard, there's no wit, humour, or anything that suggests any real thought, it's just a crude threat, not worthy of any cricketer, more so when they are the Captain of their team.

Michael Clarke did say this afterwards,

"I regret that language I used, and I regret the fact I said it over the stump mic – the last thing I want is boys and girls watching to be going and playing club cricket and saying things like that to opposition players," he said.
"I think that's unacceptable that the Australian cricket captain is setting that example."

So what he was actually saying was "I'm sorry I got caught out", which is a sorry excuse for an apology.


Some things in life are harder to do than others, one of the hardest must be to sandpaper a ball down with a broken arm, but then who would want to sandpaper a cricket ball ??.


Personally I love the game and never want to see or hear the players drop to the level of footballers where abuse of the opposition or the referee is seen as normal, to me that would be taking something great and diminishing it, don't get me wrong I know times change, but cricket should always be played in the true spirit of sport, rant over.
 

The bloke you can see below with the big bushy mustache is bid bad Merv Hughes who I once met at Northant's County Cricket Ground, he had a reputation for swilling large amounts of lager on aeroplanes apparently.

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I like to think that if it had been suggested by an opposing batsman to FHT that he thought a lot of himself as a bowler he would have responded more eloquently, perhaps using this quote from Shakespeare,

​"Self-Love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting".

Quoting the Bard, not something done too much on the cricket pitches of today I suppose, but maybe something we should encourage, with microphones on the stumps these days cricket could become both an entertainment and an education in one.

I recently got hold of a copy of Franks book " A Typhoon called Tyson", the book was first published in 1961 so reading it's not only interesting to hear his own thoughts on cricket and life in general but it's a little bit of social history.

The book is full of facts about that time when the attitudes of the ordinary person and those at the top were so much different than what we consider the norm today, it was literally another world. 

The story of how Lancashire lost the talents of the man is typical of the closed, inflexible thinking of the cricket hierarchy that existed at the time, probably prevalent generally. a sort of arrogance that says we know best. Wait a minute, surely we have moved on, or have we ?.

I watched the film about Eddie the Eagle a while back and seeing how Eddie had to struggle to convince the high ups to give him a chance apart from all the other obstacles he faced confirmed the idiocy of that sort of thought process.


During the introduction where Frank describes his own feelings about the art of fast bowling he says" I know there have been better bowlers, with better actions, more control and greater accuracy". Keats said in one of his letters "O for a life of sensation rather than thoughts". That would be a good comment on my bowling.

Lord Kitchener once wrote a song called "Tyson taught them a lesson that can't be forgotten", Like the lyrics, magnificent Tyson, had their batsmen beaten.

​The bowling was so good it remind them of Larwood.

Oh how those Aussies must have loved Frank, the pommie annihilator.

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Frank describes in the book how after the Sydney Test which England had won the team were still in the city on the following Sunday, and he and George Duckworth took a train to visit Harold Larwood who had been the destroyer of the Aussies in the notorious Body Line series.

Harold and his family had emigrated to Australia and although at the time of Body Line there had been a lot a anger generated by England's bowling tactics the Aussies had largely forgiven Harold Larwood..

In Australia the blame for these tactics was laid squarely at the feet of the then England Captain, Douglas Jardine,  Franks thoughts were that  Harold resented the fact that English official opinion placed the odium of an unpopular policy on the shoulders of the mere pawns in the game.

When Frank suggested to Larwood that he should come and meet the rest of the England team he turned the offer down, and apparently fours years later when Frank visited again and asked the same question the offer was turned down again, Harold it seemed wanted nothing to do with the MCC.


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FH Tyson played only 17 Test matches for England, the enormous strains on the body which fast bowling inflicts took their toll and he inevitably suffered from injuries.

Every fast bowler has his own unique action, Tysons described as a mix of the rhythmic and the ungainly. A long run up culminating in a high arm action, his left shoulder facing the batsman, right arm cocked up. He did shorten his run up at some point but the strains on his leg and shoulder joints must have been huge.

This was followed by a ferocious heave of the shoulders. On delivery, his left leg kicked out and his arm was brought down with a slinging movement the entire weight landing on the right foot.

The Australian newspapers decribed him like this, "he looked more like a pre-occupied scientist. Without a cricket ball in his hand he wouldn’t cause a ripple in a bird bath.”

Looks however can be deceiving and Tyson bowled with tremendous pace. Making his first class debut against the touring Indians of 1952, the slips moved back an extra five yards after his first ball. He did not take long to get his first wicket, Pankaj Roy caught behind for a duck.

Pace bowling puts fear into even the best batsmen, and given that at the time Tyson was bowling the only protective equipment worn was a box, you can understand that fear, a cricket ball to the arm, hand, or leg at pace is immensely painful, to the head or neck it could prove fatal.

Tyson retired from First-Class cricket in 1960, at which time he emigrated to Australia and took up post as a School Master, he also coached cricket, nobody loving a sport so much could ever really give it up completely.

Given the outcome of the 2005 Ashes series Franks thoughts on how it would turn out is worth a read

www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/sport/tyson-fears-imaginative-australians-hold-ashes-advantage-1-2425256


He also commentated on cricket for no less than 36 years for Australian radio, a great man for Northants and for England, wherever you may be Frank, thank you.