The Twelfth Man 2016

10 Brian Turner (27 December 2015, aged 77) Brian came late to WCLS with a visit in March 2009 to reflect on his life/career and stepped into the breach to join a Q&A session at the Society’s 2010 Christmas lunch alongside Society President, ‘Dickie’ Bird and then Yorkshire seam bowler Ben Sanderson. The son of Wombwell- born Cyril Turner (200 matches for Yorkshire between 1925-1946), Brian made two appear- ances for the Yorkshire CCC First Eleven (1960/61). He played a full part in Sheffield United winning the Yorkshire League in the 1960s as a left-handed batsman and right-arm medium/fast bowler. Thereafter he went as professional to Golcar in the Huddersfield League. The Society’s condolences to Brian’s wife, Stella, and his sons, Nick and John. Mick Pope FRANK TYSON – HERO AND FRIEND Wombwell Patron, David Frith, pays a personal tribute to a fellow Society Patron It’s a rare experience in life to get to know one of one’s heroes really well. That’s what happened with Frank Tyson. I’d been at the lovely old Sydney Cricket Ground when he blasted England to victory at Sydney in 1954/55 with some of the fastest bowling ever (10 for 130 in the match). Shaken, the Australians were even easier meat in the next Test at Melbourne, on a less than reliable pitch (Tyson 7 for 27 Obituaries second innings). Then, when the Ashes series came to a damp conclusion back in Sydney, I saw Frank knock the bat out of Keith Miller’s hands after running in only about six yards in order to save time. England were seeking victory in a match which hadn’t started until the fourth scheduled day. Manchester isn’t the only place where rain can fall as if forever. So there, in the first paragraph, I’ve referred to two WCLS Patrons of years gone by, valued friends both, greatly missed. In 1955 I was simply in awe of Frank Tyson. At the end of the final Test of that colourful series I’d spotted him through the large open dressing-room window at the SCG. He had the torso of a heavyweight boxer. That – his steel-strong back – is where his speed came from. There was nothing sleek and rhythmic about him. It was brute force, and he knew it. Time would not be on his side, so he gave it everything while it lasted, knowing that “the glad animal action” would some day soon desert him. He was well satisfied when it was all over, having made a second tour of Australia – a country he was growing attached to – four years later, when his speed was well down on 1954/55, and he struggled. That country was where his future lay, thanks mainly to his marriage to Ursula, a lovely lady from Melbourne. In the 1990s, Debbie and I became regular socialisers with them whenever we took a break on Queensland’s Gold Coast. Frank laughed when I told him of how, as a star- struck teenager, I had placed myself 20 yards away from him on the footpath at the back of the SCG pavilion one evening, just to imagine what it was like to face this killer bowler, as Morris and McDonald and Harvey and Benaud had done a few hours earlier. It wasn’t an entirely successful exercise in “envisioning” (the appropriate modern term, I believe). Frank was walking very slowly, immaculately dressed in a suit, and was smiling. Had anyone then told me that one day we’d be close friends, I’d have laughed in their face. We saw each other in several press-boxes in both countries, but it was the annual proximity in Queensland that brought us together, picnicking in the rainforest, dining in the hubbub of Surfers Paradise, and – without our wives – netting at the local Gold Coast Dolphins ground, where Frank was coaching. One evening, when almost Brian Turner, alongside Yorkshire bowler Ben Sanderson and Society President, ‘Dickie’ Bird, at the Christmas Sunday lunch in December 2010