Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

111 captains? Presumably, because there was no amateur with the character of Sellers, or Burnet, to lead the other ten, and with enough basic playing ability. As ever, what Yorkshire did was only half the story; what other counties were doing was the other half. Other counties had gone over to a captain from among their professionals, with success. An all-professional team would always make more runs or take more wickets than a team of ten professionals carrying an amateur captain. Unless Yorkshire wanted to be also-rans, they had to follow, and give up an amateur captain. County clubs had to make such decisions; while the MCC, setting policy for all, was spinning out questions for years, decades even, rather than coming to a decision that might offend some. One trick of the MCC was to stack a committee with people that thought the same way; the 1957 committee on amateurs for example merely ‘consulted’ some professionals over lunch. The 1961 inquiry on the future of first-class cricket did draw on a slightly wider spectrum of cricket, as it included old professionals such as Bill Bowes, and Alec Bedser. The Times described the 20 as ‘mostly men of progressive ideas who are not afraid to express them’. However, they were also ‘some of the game’s most dauntless talkers’, which brought the risk of no end of talk without agreement. The inquiry duly worried away at amateurs. On Thursday 8 February 1962, Sellers said that he ‘was forced to the conclusion that the time was coming when the status of the amateur would have to be waived’. And on Tuesday 29 May 1962, Sellers agreed with the previous speaker Walter Robins: ‘… that the dividing line between the amateur and the professional was very slender and he felt that unless we moved with the times cricket would fall into disrepute. Public opinion he said would ignore the distinction in the first class game and would accept all players as cricketers.’ Sellers, speaking of ‘time’ and ‘the times’, was implying that regardless of personal preference or even what was good for the game, those in authority were helpless against wider social trends. He was thus altogether more realistic than a reactionary such as MCC secretary Ronnie Aird, who at an earlier meeting argued amateurs would play more if only given the chance, and that counties should cut the number of professionals. The authorities were helpless because the game was going broke; only about half a dozen counties even after economies could hope to break even in an average year. At the inquiry’s meeting on Thursday 23 November 1961, Sellers stressed spectator appeal. ‘He said that in Yorkshire his committee was coming round to the opinion that there was a surfeit of counties today and that the public should get less. He did not think that one-day cricket would attract the public though he had no objection to the introduction of a knockout competition on a one-day basis as an experiment.’ C.A.F.Hastilow the chairman of Warwickshire proposed, and Sellers seconded, that from 1963 each first-class county play 28 three-day County Championship matches (some were playing 32) and ‘a knockout competition to include certain minor counties … on the basis of one-day single innings matches’. Donald Carr and Gubby Allen – in other words, the MCC – put forward an amendment to defer the one-day competition; that lost, five votes to seven. The Hastilow resolution was then agreed The Sixties