Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

109 Chapter Eleven The Sixties Some men are much better and wiser than others, but experience seems to show that hardly any man is so much better or wiser than others that he can permanently stand the test of irresponsible power over them. LT Hobhouse, Liberalism (1911) Why did Sellers, and not Herbert Sutcliffe for instance, become chairman in 1959? Being a leader on the field did not mean, in any sport, that you could lead as well, or at all well, in a committee. Sellers was however highly qualified. He was used to meetings, as a Test selector while a player, before he joined the Yorkshire committee. In July 1939 the Derby Evening Telegraph reported Sellers left the match at Chesterfield at 4 pm on the Saturday, to pick England’s team for the Second Test against West Indies, that would start the following Saturday. The Times , previewing the season in April 1959, noted Sellers’ take-over, calling him ‘dynamic and forthright’. Were they codewords for tyrannical? Even if they were, the Times commented that ‘an influence such as his seems to be just what Yorkshire need’. The Times correctly named Yorkshire as one of Surrey’s challengers; Yorkshire became champions to end Surrey’s seven year run. When Yorkshire famously won their last match to clinch the Championship at Hove, by scoring at a good seven runs an over, Sellers told the press: ‘I think it is a magnificent performance by a young, inexperienced side. I said earlier in the season that I didn’t expect to win the Championship until 1961, but I am delighted to be able to eat those words.’ Success, as always, disarmed any critics. Sellers simply put the time in. He and some of his former players were among the mourners at George Hirst’s funeral at Huddersfield, in May 1954, for instance. When Sellers and others wrote to accept an invitation from Lord’s to be a member of the MCC’s 1961 inquiry into the future of first-class cricket, they said when they could attend meetings: ‘Any weekday,’ Sellers wrote, and not Saturday or Sunday. As Swanton wrote of the inquiry’s 20 members – by later standards ludicrously top-heavy with distinguished players and old-guard administrators: these were ‘true amateurs … in that they give countless hours of free and selfless service to the game’. It’s telling that in an age of professionals, in sport and workplaces generally, the very word ‘amateur’ has become a sneer; to do something not for money (except expenses, maybe) but for the love of it is old-fashioned, even mad. In truth amateurism (if, like all things, done well) had a point. While amateurs in politics, as in the 101 civic bodies that made England what it was, were a select club, because few could afford to