Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

135 Keighley, December 2015 we don’t go to Lord’s; and the answer there was clearly Brian was going against the establishment.’ While Cope was not close to him, Sellers had stuck up for the young player; ‘and I shall never, ever forget that’. The words men used to describe Sellers, alive or dead, were of a kind. Formidable, said many, including Sir Len Hutton. Forceful, said Trevor Bailey. Sellers was ‘most forthright’ (Hutton again); ‘a colourful character’ (Cope and others); ‘lively’, said Yardley in a 1962 newspaper column. ‘Dominating personality’, wrote Swanton. All these are revealingly imprecise. They leave it to us to imagine what sort of force or domination; for good or bad? Yardley’s memoir is useful, for its date – when Sellers was at his cricketing crossroads, turning from captain to committee man – and because Yardley, as one of the few men who could hold his own against Sellers socially and in playing ability, simply dared to write at length: Sellers is not a martinet, but he is a disciplinarian almost in the Lord Hawke tradition. Yet he has an unsurpassed sense of humour. He is fearless in making decisions, fearless against any bowling in any situation, and equally fearless in Committee where he speaks his mind without reserve, and where his vivid personality is respected by everyone. Lord Hawke approved of what he saw; ‘the right type of leader’, he called Sellers at Yorkshire’s annual meeting in 1933. ‘That most adept captain’, the Times called him in its preview of the 1948 season; by 1938, ‘unquestionably the best captain in the world’, wrote Bill Bowes. Ian Peebles (one of Sellers’ few first-class bowling victims) called him able, courageous and thrusting; the Daily Worker , in its 1948 cricket handbook, able and outspoken. By 1948, Hammond had cause to hate or ignore Sellers; instead he was warmer than many: … one of the finest models any young cricket captain could wish; he was a great-hearted fighter, a most dogged batsman, and one who kept his team of ‘Tykes’ perfectly in hand with a wonderful mixture of jokes and discipline that they all loved. Everyone was defining Sellers; and while you will always find differences (he was at times a martinet, according to Bowes), a pattern emerges, in what people said and did not. Few said what they thought of him. Because they did not dare; because it was better unsaid? Besides asking those that knew him best, we should also look to outsiders, less used to him. Some found Sellers hurtfully blunt or foul-mouthed. In September 1951, the 18-year-old Colin Cowdrey made 106 for the Gentlemen against the Players at Scarborough, the highest score of the match. Cowdrey was not playing in the last match of the festival, and as he was leaving the Grand Hotel, he had ‘an encounter’: I said, ‘Goodbye Mr Sellars,’ [sic] to which he replied, ‘Judging by the shot you got out to I’m not surprised that you are not playing in the last match up here.’ I was thunderstruck. What I did not know at that shattering moment, was that this was Sellars’ manner with everyone. I was going out of the door