Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

104 As Wardle told his side of the story, it was also striking how much Sellers featured in it. Hesketh complained that Wardle had ‘the wrong attitude’ and swore on the field. Wardle didn’t deny it to the Mail , but implied most players swore too. He recalled Trent Bridge in 1947, his ‘second or third’ match for Yorkshire (in fact his eleventh). Brian Sellers the noted disciplinarian was my captain and I looked up to him in a manner befitting a colt. We were fielding close to each other – he was in the gully and I was at cover. We both went to field the same ball. As I reached it I heard Sellers shout ‘right’. The next thing I knew he had stumbled into me and fallen over me; in the famed Sellers manner he severely reprimanded me with ‘when I say right, leave the … ball alone, you silly young ….’; the words were right, believe me. So why pick on me for the use of bad language in the field. In a more prudish era, the Mail left the actual swear words out. That players, who might otherwise have worked in mines or factories, swore, could hardly came as a surprise; that the captain did, might have shocked. While good manners never took a wicket, they mattered to the Yorkshire club. As so often in this story, this attitude dated from Lord Hawke, who wrote in 1904 that ‘the moral character of my men is of infinitely more importance than their form’. Sellers cast a shadow over Wardle’s case. Norman Yardley was ‘too nice’, Wardle said; players took advantage and ‘things began to slide’; although Wardle did not spell it out, he meant a slide in discipline from Sellers’ time. Another little story showed how Sellers was keeping his eye on Wardle. At a cricket quiz the previous winter, someone had asked what Wardle thought of Burnet, the new captain. Wardle replied diplomatically The Wardle Affair Norman Yardley as Yorkshire captain. Back (l to r): Raymond Illingworth, Frank Lowson, Bob Appleyard, Brian Close, Roy Booth, Fred Trueman. Front: Vic Wilson, Willie Watson, Yardley, Leonard Hutton, Billy Sutcliffe, Johnny Wardle.