Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

132 When I’m 64: Illingworth and Close clubman in 1970 could have seen it was time to change custom; to recruit an outstanding player from overseas. Garry Sobers, for instance, had played for Yorkshire on tour, and the world had not ended; nor did it when Yorkshire did field its first foreigner, Sachin Tendulkar. Sellers had sailed with the times over professional captains, and one-day cricket; he could have used his clout to make the case for foreigners – or at least tried, as most members were against change. To be a true steward, you have to know what is the essence you are guarding. As a captain, Sellers had seen what was essential easily enough; to beat the other fellows. Stewardship of a club lacked the rules and the win, lose or draw certainty of sport; the opponents off the field had been less obvious than the other eleven men; in the end, Sellers’ worst enemy might have been himself. His son Andrew recalled how ‘it’, the rebellion by members, ‘finished him off, just disappointed him so much, he couldn’t quite fathom, he couldn’t understand what had gone on, he couldn’t understand the modern way of thinking or anything like that; there we go.’ Sellers was hardly to blame if those after him were feeble; unless he had not made other strong-minded men welcome, on the Wild West principle of the town not being big enough for the two of them. By the time John Hampshire batted slowly on purpose to miss a bowling point in 1978, a public protest against Boycott that went unpunished, it hardly mattered who was right or wrong any longer. A weak committee was as bad as a failed tyrant.