Norman Bertram Fleetwood "Tufty" Mann (28 December 1920 – 31 July 1952) was a South African cricketer who played in 19 Test matches from 1947 to 1951.
[1] Tall, thin and bespectacled, Tufty Mann was a lower-order right-handed batsman and a slow left-arm orthodox spin bowler.
[2] Born in Benoni, Transvaal, Mann was educated at the Michaelhouse boarding school in South Africa and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University.
[5] Back in South Africa the following winter, however, Mann made his first-class cricket debut for Natal in five games in the 1939–40 season and bowled economically in them, though he did not take more than three wickets in any one innings.
Mann's accuracy was one of the few factors that could subdue the English pair, and his first bowling in Test cricket, in the first game of the five-match series, was a spell of eight successive maidens; he finished the innings with figures of no wickets for 10 runs in 20 overs.
"Mann rarely departed from his orthodox going-away ball on the middle or off stump and on account of his low trajectory batsmen seldom were able to get to the pitch," Wisden wrote.
[18] His batting was occasionally successful too: against Glamorgan he hit 97 in 55 minutes, including a six and 13 fours, and was out to "a deep-field catch" going for his century.
Mann returned to South Africa for the 1947–48 domestic cricket season and in the first game took the best bowling figures of his career: eight for 59 against Western Province.
[2] In the series against England, Mann headed the South African bowling averages, though with 17 wickets he took fewer than Cuan McCarthy and Athol Rowan.
South Africa's bowling was ostensibly hampered by an injury to Rowan which kept him out of all the Tests, though Hugh Tayfield emerged as a spin partner for Mann and the real weakness, shown in the series figures, was in seam bowling – Tayfield took 17 wickets in the series, Mann, 16 and the other bowlers only 17 between them.
[32] The next two Tests were not successful either for Mann personally or for his team, with both games lost, and the fourth match of the series was played on a batting pitch at Leeds and Mann bowled 60 overs, taking three for 97, as England matched South Africa by scoring more than 500 before rain washed out the final day.
[34] He returned to the team for one final county match against Middlesex at Lord's, but the game was washed out and he did not take a wicket in just six overs of bowling.