Francis Alfred Tarrant (11 December 1880 – 29 January 1951) was an Australian cricketer whose first-class career spanned from 1899 to 1936, and included 329 matches.

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 1906, while his bowling was impotent on the rock-hard wickets prevailing in the Home Counties for most of the season, Tarrant was unplayable on rain-affected pitches at Old Trafford and in Yorkshire, and he scored 1000 runs for the first time.

1907 saw Tarrant take a leap into cricket's elite, with his batting, at least for three months, marking him as a player of remarkable patience even if he failed to use all the strokes he was capable of playing.

That winter, Tarrant returned to Australia and in six matches scored 762 runs for an average of 76, including 159 against the touring MCC team and 206 against New South Wales at the SCG.

His batting also grew beyond the purely defensive as he developed his on-side strokes – so much that against Surrey at Lord's in 1911 he scored 89 in seventy minutes when Middlesex wanted quick runs for a declaration.