Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

128 When I’m 64: Illingworth and Close a few laughs. Brian Sellers’ brother Godfrey was ‘a serious man, and father was the one that created havoc’. Whatever you think of Boycott’s years as Yorkshire captain, and indeed whether you find Boycott interesting or not: that’s his story and not Sellers’. We forget easily that the sacking of Close was only half of the equation; the other half was the naming of Boycott. According to Don Wilson, Boycott’s first vice-captain, Sellers ‘opted for Boycott with his casting vote’. According to the committee minutes, the choice of Boycott (and Wilson) was unanimous. Few minded Boycott at first, partly because no-one could foresee the controversy of the next 15 years, and partly because others too saw him as the likely captain. Illingworth in his 1969 autobiography had named Boycott as Yorkshire captain for the 1970s, over the more senior Phil Sharpe (who led Yorkshire in 1970 when Close was injured). John Hampshire suggested Sharpe or Richard Hutton, ‘and my own best bet would have been Duggie Padgett’; except that Hampshire was writing in 1983, and had fallen out, like most, with Boycott. Later still, in old age Sir Leonard Hutton wondered how Boycott would have done under a captain like Sellers. Boycott would not have been the only fish in the pond; and Sellers would have given Boycott ‘more explicit instructions’, to bat in the way the team wanted, instead of gathering runs at his own speed: ‘I believe he would have responded like the rest of us to firm leadership.’ The journalist Derek Hodgson, in his history of the club in 1989, offered an intriguing counter-factual: what if Close had given the captaincy to Illingworth in 1972, and Illingworth to Boycott in 1975? However, for that very different Yorkshire history to happen, Yorkshire had to manage its assets differently; it would not have been Yorkshire. Yorkshire in 1971. Whether the photographer did it on purpose or not, he made the new captain Geoffrey Boycott look bigger than the team.