Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

106 the Brian Sellers type of leadership. He is never beaten, he refuses to give in and he expected 100 per cent from every man under him.’ In his memoir Laker, part of Surrey’s record-breaking side, suggested that ‘in many ways Surridge was the Brian Sellers of the 1950s’; each man was only a moderate batsman, a blessing in disguise, as they could devote themselves to captaincy. Trueman in old age recalled that in the 1950s he found much lingering resentment among other counties against the Yorkshire of the 1930s; and in 1949, Bill Edrich in a column said what others thought; that the ‘Tykes’ had been champions ‘far too often for the general good of the Championship’. Otherwise, the rise of Surrey and (relative) fall of Yorkshire meant that Sellers’ reputation stayed high. Yorkshire in the mid-1950s had a strong team – as strong as any, commentators pointed out. The failing, as Wardle argued, lay in the leadership, on the field and off. In his first article on the Wardle sacking, Swanton made a similar point: ‘Since 1946 the spirit of Yorkshire cricket has changed …’ In other words, Yorkshire’s decline in playing standards dated from the end of Sellers’ playing time. The argument lay in who was at fault; and, more to the point, who had to go, to restore the missing team spirit. Anyone interested, then, could see Wardle as a victim; or as part of the problem of a team not pulling together. Few saw both sides. Cassandra in the Daily Mirror , one of the most famous columnists of his time, was one. He showed sympathy for Wardle’s dismissal (in the ‘best headmaster-bad boy tradition’), then condemned him for bursting into print, ‘with a school boy scribbling that does him no credit’. Cassandra’s verdict mattered more than most, because such leading columnists mirrored and led public opinion at the same time, and many readers never turned to the sports pages. A year later, when Burnet ‘resigned’ (the ‘passenger’ captain that Yorkshire in effect had chosen over Wardle) newspapers quoted Wardle: ‘anyway I had better say nowt more for fear of putting my foot in it all over again’. By going to a newspaper in August 1958, Wardle had indeed put his foot in it. The very power of his case – that plainly had been brewing in him for years – caused offence. The truth hurt. The stink was big enough for Cassandra to notice. However by giving his story only to the Daily Mail , Wardle was keeping it from every other daily. Journalists would resent that; most came down against him. Wardle brought another issue into the affair; Yorkshire could, less hypocritically than the newspapers denied their scoop, pose as the victim. Yardley for example complained of ‘washing of dirty linen in public’. Swanton deplored what had become a ‘sordid wrangle’. The club won the public relations contest. Other counties’ interest in Wardle – by Nottinghamshire for one – came to nothing. Sellers The Wardle Affair Surrey captain Stuart Surridge: the Sellers of the 1950s?