Bob Appleyard: Cricketer who overcame illness and family tragedy to become a fine bowler for England and Yorkshire

Appleyard loved the battle of wits with the batsman and had a deep desire to make the world a better place

Appleyard: he had strong views and didn’t mind making enemies, but he was a rock in his family and a loyal friend (Getty)

In the history of English cricket there have been few more extraordinary and more inspiring stories than that of the Yorkshire and England bowler Bob Appleyard. And such was his battling character, making light of his repeated setbacks, that the full extent of his triumph over adversity did not emerge till he was coaxed into telling his life story at the age of 79.

He was already 26 when he broke into the Yorkshire side, a medium-pace bowler playing on Saturday afternoons in the Bradford League, but in his first full summer of county cricket, 1951, he turned himself into a two-in-one bowler – swing with the new ball, off-spin with the old – and he got through 1,323 overs, taking a remarkable 200 wickets, the only bowler to achieve this rare feat in his debut season.

He loved bowling. He wanted to be in action all the time, even to the point of questioning the laws of cricket. So strong were his views on this that one former team-mate suggested as a suitable inscription for his headstone: "ROBERT APPLEYARD – DISAPPOINTED NOT TO HAVE BOWLED AT BOTH ENDS."

He loved the battle of wits with the batsman. He was always perfecting new grips and changes of pace, trying to deceive his opponent. He was interested in yoga, developing a theory of peak concentration, but he was adamant that he was nobody special, that others could be two-in-one bowlers if they broke out of the mould of conventional thinking.

That first summer of county cricket left him exhausted, and he undertook a relentless winter-long campaign to increase his stamina. But he could sense no improvement, and the reason became clear when he was taken ill during the first match of 1952. He was diagnosed with advanced tuberculosis. He had taken his 200 wickets with the whole top half of his left lung out of action.

He underwent major surgery, spending 11 months in bed after which he had to learn to walk again. His wife, Connie, was told he would never return to cricket, but she did not let him know. Instead she smuggled in a cricket ball, and beneath the sheets he worked to retain the hardness of his spinning finger.

He missed two summers, but such was his indomitable spirit that he was back at the start of 1954. The talk was of him playing some two-day cricket in the second team, but he went straight into the full Yorkshire side and took 154 wickets. At the age of 30, against Pakistan at Trent Bridge, he made his England debut, leading the team off with five wickets on the first day. He always held that it was not the 200 wickets in 1951 but his return that summer after surgery that was his greatest achievement. He was an inspiration to those with TB, a killer disease only a few years earlier.

That winter he toured Australia under the captaincy of his fellow Yorkshireman, Len Hutton. It was another test of his health and his bowling skills, and once more he was equal to the challenge. Realising that his bowling was unsuitable to the conditions, he devised a different flight and, though the pace of Tyson and Statham captured the headlines of their Ashes success, he took vital wickets, all of them top-six batsmen, and topped the bowling averages. Then at Auckland, at the end of the six-month tour, he was the principal destroyer when England bowled out New Zealand for 26, the lowest ever Test total.

Injuries plagued his career thereafter, and he retired in 1958. His final first-class bowling figures – 708 wickets at 15.48 each – have been bettered since the First World War by only Hedley Verity.

He went into business, as a salesman in the packaging industry, and he made a great success of that, too. At one stage, after a take-over, he found himself working directly to Robert Maxwell, whom he soon summed up. When Maxwell trumped up charges to dismiss him, he fought him right up to the High Court and won his case. "I know that Appleyard," Maxwell said. "He's a bloody-minded Yorkshireman. He'll take me all the way."

So what was it that gave Bob Appleyard his inner strength – not just in his public life but at home, where his son, Ian, and a grandson, John, both died at a young age of leukaemia? When it fell to me to tell his life story, he opened up about his childhood and for a long time he did not want me to include the details in the book. He wished to protect his family from what he felt was a great stigma.

The son of a railwayman, he was the older of two children. His mother left them when he was seven, a source of shame in working-class Bradford in the early 1930s. Then his sister died of diphtheria when he was 13. His father remarried and had two young children, but on the day war was declared Bob was sent to stay with his grandmother. When he returned to the house next day, he found his father, stepmother and the two babies dead in the bath with the gas on. He was 15 years old, with everyone he loved gone. In his darkest hour he faced a choice between hope and despair, and he chose the hope of his Christian faith. Through all his further adversities his faith never faltered.

The telling of his story lifted a great weight, and it brought him fresh recognition and a new burst of life. He served a two-year term as President of Yorkshire County Cricket Club, performing all his duties with typical dedication, and in 2008 he was awarded an MBE for his tireless work in raising money for youth cricket.

He was not an easy man. He had strong views and he did not mind making enemies. But he was a rock in his family and a loyal friend, and he had a deep desire to make the world a better place. He was a great battler, never accepting defeat, and against opposition he brought to fruition his vision of a Cricket Academy at Yorkshire, the first in the country. In summer 2014 he had the satisfaction of seeing the County Championship won by a Yorkshire team almost all of whom had come through the academy.

Yes, he was "a bloody-minded Yorkshireman", as his book was originally going to be called, but in the end it became No Coward Soul, from the last poem Yorkshire's own Emily Bronte wrote before she died of tuberculosis: "No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere." That was perfect for Bob.

STEPHEN CHALKE

Robert Appleyard, cricketer: born Bradford 27 June 1924; MBE 2008; married 1951 Connie Ledgard (died 2008; two daughters, and one son deceased); died Harrogate 17 March 2015.