Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Full name | Francis Alfred Tarrant | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Born |
Fitzroy, Colony of Victoria |
11 December 1880||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Died | 29 January 1951 Upper Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia |
(aged 70)||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Batting style | Right-handed | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bowling style | Left-arm slow-medium | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Role | All-rounder | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Relations |
WA Tarrant (uncle) LBN Tarrant (son) |
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Domestic team information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Years | Team | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1899–1925 | Victoria | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1903–1914 | MCC | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1904–1914 | Middlesex | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1915–1936 | Europeans | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1927–1933 | Patiala | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Umpiring information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tests umpired | 2 (1933–1934) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
FC umpired | 8 (1932–1934) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Career statistics | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Source: CricketArchive, 11 January 2015 |
Francis Alfred "Frank" Tarrant (11 December 1880 – 29 January 1951) was an Australian cricketer whose first-class career spanned from 1899 to 1936, and included 329 matches.
From Melbourne, Tarrant began his career with Victoria in Australia's Sheffield Shield, but found fame playing in England, with a long career as an all-rounder for Middlesex in the County Championship. After the First World War, he was mostly active in India, appearing for the Europeans in the Bombay Quadrangular tournament. Tarrant played his final first-class match at the age of 56, during the 1936–37 season. He had also umpired in two England–India Test matches (and several first-class games) several seasons earlier. Considered one of the best players never to play at Test level, Tarrant scored almost 18,000 runs and over 1,500 wickets during his long career, and completed "the double" of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in a season on eight separate occasions.
A nephew of ex-Victoria player Ambrose Tarrant, Tarrant first played for Victoria in 1898/1899, and met with little success either as a batsman or a bowler then or in 1900/1901.
However, he moved to England in 1903 to join the Lord's ground staff and played a number of matches for the MCC while qualifying for Middlesex. In these, he showed himself developing into a left-arm spinner of above average pace but with nothing beyond steadiness when pitches did not help him. In 1904, he showed development as a solid right-handed batsman, and in 1905, when fully qualified, he was a valuable aid to Middlesex. his superb batting on a difficult pitch to draw the game with Essex at Leyton showed he was a player of exceptional resolution during the most difficult crisis.