Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

124 When I’m 64: Illingworth and Close what he said was correct. If you lost a game you lost and you have got to accept it. It isn’t good talking the way Close did and saying the umpires were bad.’ Sellers also said that the committee had wanted to give young players a chance in the Sunday League; Close had not done it. ‘There were at least three occasions like that involving young players,’ Sellers told the meeting. If the committee were treating Sundays as a time to try out young players, it was hardly taking one-day games seriously – one of the faults they sacked Close for!? Arguably most damaging was what Sellers said in self-defence: ‘I am not a dictator. I carry out my duties on the instructions of the committee.’ Just as it never sounds good when a husband denies he is a wife-beater, Sellers was admitting that some saw him as a dictator. Was Sellers lying, or deluded? The minutes of the cricket committee for 1970 back Sellers. Close should have realised he was putting his job in jeopardy. In June, Herbert Sutcliffe asked why the 26-year-old junior batsman John Woodford did not play in a Sunday League match at Hull, as the committee had decided the meeting before. Close admitted to a ‘mistake’. In July, when Cope likewise had not played when picked for a Sunday game, Close said he had ‘forgotten’. At its 24 September meeting, the committee took Sellers’ side over the Lister affair and wrote to Close accordingly. Nor was Close at the next, 22 October meeting (‘it was assumed he was away on holiday’). If he imagined he could defy his employer over their selections, he was mistaken. As someone sacked by England over a trifle in 1967, Close should have known better than to give his county excuses to make a fuss. His age, 39, and matches he missed through injuries were already counting against him. After the 1970 season the committee asked two local surgeons to look at Close’s arthritic right knee (in 1968, only one looked). The surgeons passed Close fit, with rest, only for the committee at their next meeting on 19 November to doubt it. That, and ‘Close’s attitude towards one day matches’ was enough to do for him. Close was named in the minutes as present at that final meeting; presumably he left when they discussed him. In other years, when that happened, the committee told the captain on his return that they had given him another year. That raises the unpleasant picture of Close sitting in front of men who knew his fate while he did not. Did Close really not pick up something? The committee agreed that Sellers and Nash should ‘interview Close as soon as possible and give him the opportunity of resigning’. Sellers was indeed only doing the committee’s work. Members had let off steam at the AGM; they had made newspaper front pages; none of that meant they posed any practical challenge. The Guardian reported Sellers saying afterwards: ‘All that the rejection of the report means is that the action group have won five points on the first innings. Now it’s our turn to bat.’ He had a point. The meeting re- elected Sir William Worsley (who had not been at the crucial 19 November meeting), as president; the treasurer and auditor (though the club had shown a loss it admitted was ‘disastrous’, thanks to the lost South African tour takings); and the vice-presidents, including Sellers. His cricketing metaphor however was telling and unfortunate. He was implying that the protesters were equals; competitors. Just as ‘if batsman thinks it’s