Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

127 When I’m 64: Illingworth and Close who would take over from Sellers. Kilburn in the Yorkshire Post doubted Yorkshire would find someone so qualified. Kilburn, always informed, passed judgement not only on a man, but his times, that Kilburn had grown old sharing: Since 1959 Brian Sellers has given unstintingly of time and service to the promotion of Yorkshire cricket. He has formed judgement on play through innumerable hours of observation and by persistent inquiry. He has advocated the Yorkshire cause at countless meetings and social functions. He has represented the Yorkshire view of cricket at national level and has taken his turn on MCC committees. His personality and passion in cricket has drawn wide publicity on his pronouncements and activities but he has never evaded responsibility nor has he sought personal advantage from the authority of office. He has been forthright in criticism of Yorkshire cricket and cricketers behind closed doors but he has always presented their public defence with unflinching loyalty. He has been a stern leader but never an unjust one and he has borne without rancour much uninformed criticism. By his own choice he would have retired from his present office at least two years ago and he had resolved on yesterday’s announcement last autumn before controversy swept into the Yorkshire club. Those who knew him will understand that he is resigning not through opposition to his stay but because he believes he has fulfilled obligations to the limit of his capacity and that change will not harm Yorkshire. He timed his resignation from the captaincy on the same principle. That’s worth quoting so fully, not only because Kilburn would have been Sellers’ biographer, but for blindness in old age. Kilburn had revealed something important; that Sellers had resolved on his own retirement, when he gave Close the sack. Sellers may have been tempted into something drastic, when nearing the end of power, as in China Mao Tse-tung had set off the Cultural Revolution. The sacking would wipe the slate clean and give the club a fresh start. A new chairman would be in as powerful a position as could be, with an inexperienced and keen new captain. When Sellers said those few words to Close – ‘Well, Brian, you have had a good innings’ – Sellers could have been talking to himself. After a lifetime of upholding the Yorkshire club, at the end did Sellers wish, unconsciously, to bring the house down, Samson-like? For besides the paradox of Sellers as a northerner who served for years on the MCC committee, we have another: Sellers the imposer of authority – ‘yes, he was quite imposing,’ his son Andrew recalled, ‘with his hair parted down the middle; if he wasn’t very happy with you, you knew about it’ – with an impish, even anarchic streak. Andrew Sellers recalled: He loved as I did with him on many occasions especially at Sheffield, he would go and sit in amongst the crowd and then he would say some stupid comment about the player or whatever and there would be a hell of a row, an argument starts all the way round which he would get going and then say, ‘come on, let’s piss off, we have got this lot going’, we would leave that lot shouting at each other, then we would go somewhere else and he might do the same thing. That was the sort of thing he liked doing, so we did have