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Ron Hopkinson emailed us about a number of memories including a game at Derby when Frank Tyson was playing for Northamptonshire.
Ron wrote; “One memory of mine was during a game versus Northamptonshire in the 60s when a few of us had cycled from Somercotes and were parked with our bikes by the boundary rope. ‘Typhoon’ Tyson was starting his run up right in front of us. At one point as he approached us he winked and said to us ‘Move back a bit lads, this is going to be a fast one!’
I also remember playing football for Derbyshire Amateurs on the ground and the cast iron baths of cold water in the dressing rooms. My sister played hockey for Derbyshire girls there too.
Our Heritage Officer, David Griffin, writes;
Ron’s mention of Frank ‘Typhoon’ Tyson prompted me to take a fresh look at his overall career.
A Lancastrian by birth, Tyson is acknowledged as one of the fastest bowlers of all time. Few who saw him in his prime – or more pertinently, faced him – would attest to this assertion.
In his autobiography (A Typhoon Called Tyson) he wrote; ‘To bowl quick is to revel in the glad animal action; to thrill in physical prowess and to enjoy a certain sneaking feeling of superiority over the other mortals who play the game. No batsman likes quick bowling, and this knowledge gives one a sense of omnipotence.’ ‘Oh yes, there have been better fast bowlers. But I doubt whether there has been one who derived more pleasure from bowling fast.’
There can never have been a better description of what lies beneath the surface of the fastest of bowlers.
That he bowled with genuine pace is not in question; plenty of observers saw Tyson at his peak as well as many of the modern quicks of the 1970s and 1980s when the West Indians, in particular, brought high-paced fast bowling into the Test arena, and they confirmed that Tyson conceded little to the modern speedsters. The very fact that his nickname was ‘Typhoon’ speaks volumes for his pace.
He had a short career – he was never known to try and bowl within himself – and only played first class cricket from 1952 to 1960. He played with Northamptonshire and was selected for England on 17 occasions. He took 76 Test wickets at an average of 18.56 with a strike rate of 45. The cost of his 767 first class wickets was just 20.89 apiece.
However, he only played against Derbyshire at Derby twice, in May 1959 and June 1960, so one of these will be the game which Ron recalls.
Derbyshire won in 1959 and the 1960 game was drawn. Tyson was not particularly successful in the two matches, taking 8 wickets at 30.12 each.
However, his overall career record against Derbyshire was 29 wickets at 19.48 including 7-46 at Wellingborough School in a drawn game in 1956.
Ron also recollected football and hockey being played at Derby and mentioned the old cast iron baths in the dressing rooms.
It’s fair to say that the facilities for players were primitive, to say the least, for many, many years. The move to the current site of the pitch took place in 1955 and the Jockey’s Quarters were utilised as the dressing rooms until the pavilion was completed in 1982.
The Jockey’s Quarters themselves had been mothballed after racing ended in 1939, so for 16 years, little use was made of them and certainly nothing therein was drastically improved or modernised.
Football, cricket, and hockey took place right through to the 1990s, with two hockey pitches actually positioned on the outfield on either side of the square – one in front of the Grandstand, the other on the western side of the ground.
The new pavilion meant a not so fond farewell to iron baths and cold water (and only one high up window to watch the cricket from), but even those modern facilities were deemed to be outmoded by 21st century standards, and in 2015 the dressing rooms were again re-located, this time to The Gateway.
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