Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

107 said little or nothing; he did not have to, because others such as Yardley made the committee’s case for it. But for what Yardley called Wardle’s ‘bitter words’, Yorkshire would have looked the ungrateful employer, sacking their senior professional without explaining why, to himself or the public, which Wardle could reasonably feel implied something was wrong with him; but what? Yorkshire never said in these cases, because once an employer gave reasons, it was treating the worker as an equal, and risked giving away knowledge about itself, at worst looking foolish. In November 1959, at a meeting at Lord’s of the MCC advisory county cricket committee – Sellers was there with Yorkshire secretary John Nash – players writing for the press cropped up. It was significant that, according to the minutes, two of the most dictatorial heads of counties had their say. Wilf Wooller said the Glamorgan contract covered it, and ‘none of his players had stepped out of line’; which said much about how Wooller saw players speaking their mind, and behaving generally. Sellers felt that any article written by players should be vetted by the county secretary. ‘He indicated that an eminent amateur cricketer had written in a national newspaper advising the Yorkshire CCC as to whom their next captain should be and he felt that there should be some sort of legislation to prevent this sort of thing. All seemed well if articles were vetted.’ Evidently it irked Sellers that players outside Yorkshire went into print with their opinions about the club; he wanted them to mind their own business. Was he asking that the secretaries of the other 16 counties censor whatever their players said about Yorkshire, or did he want the right to censor? Did Sellers or anyone around the table remember he had been free with his opinions about Hammond, 13 years before?! The Wardle Affair Yorkshire committee men in a press photograph during the Wardle affair, August 1958; Brian Sellers third from left.