Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

101 or his name with title, ‘Mr Brian Sellers’, in his memoir – and that he was so liberal with private or semi-public conversations – all implied a self- confidence; perhaps an over-confidence. Sellers had left the field, just about – he would play for North Yorkshire aristocrat Sir William Worsley at Hovingham Hall in July 1952, against the Arabs, who included such grandees of cricket as Gubby Allen and Jim Swanton; and as late as 1958 for MCC at his old school. The second, longer half of Sellers’ service for the Yorkshire club was beginning; as committee man. Sellers had gone from middle man between the workers and employers to one of the employers; and his record and personality made him powerful even before he took office as chairman of the cricket committee, like his father, in 1959. In 1949, when Fred Trueman made his debut for the Yorkshire first team, Wardle told him: ‘There’s only one fellow you have to look out for round here. His name is Sellers. Nobody else matters.’ To a fellow player, Wardle gave no hint of friendly first name familiarity. Sellers was a man ‘to look out for’. ‘How right he was,’ Trueman recalled in old age. Last seasons 1946-48