Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

11 Oxford, May 1932 (‘Laughter,’ the Yorkshire Post reported.) ‘I know it. And I can tell you that they know it as well.’ (‘Loud laughter.’) ‘But we have played as 11 men. Because of that we have the honour of being champion county today.’ What Sellers’ players made of that, they kept to themselves; at least at the time. John Arlott, in his old age, recalled how a conversation with Maurice Leyland turned to county captains. ‘Nay, I don’t count captain in t’Yorkshire side,’ said Maurice. ‘We do it with ten.’ To explain why the likes of Leyland accepted Sellers so grudgingly – and yet played under him as champions, year after year – we may as well start with where Sellers came from. For in Sellers’ case, as in many others, players of an earlier generation had marked him, just as he would mark players of the next generation or two.