Alfred Mynn was an English cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er during the game's "Roundarm Era"

Roundarm bowling

In cricket, roundarm bowling is a style that was introduced in the first quarter of the 19th century and had largely superseded underarm bowling by the 1830s. Using a roundarm action, the bowler has his arm extended at about 90 degrees from his body at the point where he releases the ball...

. He was a genuine all-rounder, being both an attacking right-handed batsman and a formidable right arm fast bowler. The noted cricket writer John Woodcock

John Woodcock (cricket writer)

John Charles Woodcock OBE is an English cricket writer and journalist.He was born at Longparish, Hampshire, where he still lives, and was dubbed "the Sage of Longparish" by Alan Gibson. He is a co-author of the Longparish Village Handbook. Woodcock attended Trinity College, Oxford, and won hockey...

 ranked him as the fourth greatest cricketer of all time. Simon Wilde

Simon Wilde

Simon Wilde is an English cricket journalist and author. He has written for The Times and The Sunday Times since 1998, and is currently the latter's cricket correspondent...

 wrote of him: "The speed at which Mynn bowled... and his life-size personality captured the imagination of the public in a way no cricketer had before."

Mynn was born at Twisden, near Goudhurst in Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, the fourth son of a gentleman farmer.