The inventor of the Merlyn bowling machine, Henry Pryor, has died aged 92.

Pryor, who moved to near-by Llowes in the late 90s, developed the machine in a barn. He tested out the proto-type with Talgarth Cricket Club, after becoming a coach. After the 2005 Ashes, Merlyn lived for a long time at Gwernyfed School.

Merlyn is also knowing for helping England prepare for Shane Warne as they won the Ashes in 2005, for the first time in 18 years. England practiced against the machine, before putting what they learned into action in the game.

Wisden, ‘the bible of cricket’, ranked the Merlyn 7th in Cricket’s greatest inventions.

Pryor devoted much of his life to grassroots cricket coaching, after becoming interested in cricket in the 50s. He joined the Association of Cricket Coaches and began coaching primary schoolchildren in inner-city areas.

Retired GPO electronics engineer, Gordon Rye, put the first brain in Merlyn, so that sets of overs could be programmed in. Pryor’s wife, Anna, managed the development financially.

It was in 2003 when the then ECB national assistant coach, John Abrahams, viewed the Merlyn prototype. He asked for it to live at the academy in Loughborough. Two years later, Pryor manoeuvred Merlyn around the Ashes Test venues in a horse box. During practice before the tests, England used the machine to work out Warne’s angles. The machine gained a reputation, with players asking for early starts and private sessions with Merlyn during the comeback second Test at Edgbaston, and England went on to a historic win over Australia.

Sir Andrew Strauss OBE, English cricketer and former director of cricket of the England and Wales Cricket Board, wrote in his 2007 autobiography, Coming Into Play: “We were fortunate to have a prototype bowling machine travelling with us around the country called Merlyn. It had taken its inventor a decade to get it fizzing out balls with a similar spin and trajectory to Warne, and it became increasingly invaluable to us as the series progressed.”

Pryor’s son, Matthew, said: “I can see my father in the barn at Christmas with icicles on the corrugated iron roof and breath in a haze before him, feeding Merlyn and fizzing down another Shane Warne leg-break past my edge; or somehow reversing the Merlyn horse box into an improbably small parking space at the Oval; or at his desk recording and calculating his latest findings in handwriting only he could decipher. When I turn those corners, I will always see him from the corner of my eye.

“My father was an inventor and most of all he was a lovely and much loved husband, father and step-father. He was always pleased to see you and never grouchy, even during our frequent and surprisingly furious agreements about the state of housing in this country. As one family friend wrote to me: “He will be missed my many in many different ways.””

Pryor was born in Knockholt, Kent. He was one of four children of Olive (nee Woodall) and Charles Pryor, a tea merchant. The family moved to Framlingham in Suffolk during the second world war. Pryor’s education took him to Eton college. He did national service with the navy for two years before studying history at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1957.

Joining the family tea business, Pryor and Tindall for six years, Pryor then went on to work as an estate agent, before trying his hand at property management. He worked for family fir, Innisfail Laundry, before moving to Wales in 1995. It was there he worked on Merlyn full-time, alongside his coaching duties.

Following the success of the 2005 Ashes, Pryor designed a lighter Merlyn to focus on spin bowling. He licensed the technology to Bola, a company in Bristol, and the first official machines were delivered in 2009.

Henry’s first marriage, to Deirdre, with whom he had three daughters, Georgina, Lucinda, Henrietta, ended in divorce. In 1979 he married Anna Harcourt-Cooze (nee Radburn), my mother. Anna, his children and five stepchildren, Arabella, Sein, Willie, Sophia and Jessie, survive him.