ASHES PREVIEW

PERFECT STORM

THE RISE AND FALL OF TYPHOON TYSON

Richard Whitehead takes us back 70 years to a ferocious display of fast bowling from a little-known English tearaway who secured his place in Ashes folklore before fading from view

“I THINK HE WAS THE FASTEST BOWLER I EVER FACED – HE WAS PROBABLY THE FASTEST BOWLER I SAW IN MY CAREER.”

RAY LINDWALL ON TYSON IN THE 1954/55 ASHES

“I WAS AT SLIP AND I WAS 50 YARDS BACK. I WAS NEARER THE GATE TO GO OFF THE GROUND THAN I WAS TO THE BATSMAN.”

TOM GRAVENEY ON TYSON’S SECOND-INNINGS SPELL AT SYDNEY

“I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER THIS MATCH FOR THE COURAGE, SUSTAINED STAMINA AND DETERMINATION OF FRANK TYSON.”

AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER SIR ROBERT MENZIES AFTER TYSON’S SYDNEY HEROICS

The name of Frank Tyson echoes down the decades of Ashes history, even now used as shorthand for bowling of terrifying, destructive, series-winning speed. You do not even need to add the nickname ‘Typhoon’, but it helps to complete the aura of menace. As his Wisden obituary said in 2016: “His place in the pantheon was never disputed.”

Yet, Tyson’s was a career of one spectacular high – the triumphant Ashes series in Australia in 1954/55 – followed by several years of injury, anticlimax and frustrating underachievement. On that tour – deployed as captain Len Hutton’s principal strike weapon – he took 28 wickets, 19 of them in two epochal Tests in Sydney and Melbourne. The rest of his Test career consisted of just 12 matches in which he collected 48 wickets. All of which makes Tyson perhaps England’s most successful hunch-pick in Ashes history.