My father, Henry Pryor, who has died aged 92, devoted much of his life to grassroots cricket coaching and the invention of the bowling machine Merlyn. Merlyn proved revolutionary, both in how it made the ball torque and in playing a part in England winning the Ashes in 2005, for the first time in 18 years.
Always interested in cricket, my father had become a coach in his 50s, when I started playing as a child. He joined the Association of Cricket Coaches and began coaching primary schoolchildren in inner-city areas.
