Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

20 Sellers and son – Yorkshire only gave it one year at a time – was his. Sellers recalled Greenwood in later life: ‘He was in the paint business in Huddersfield with his father and was invited to captain the side in 1932; he was a splendid chap. The players loved him – a county hockey player, a good athlete altogether in all senses of the word.’ Greenwood’s father died; on 22 March Greenwood resigned. Sellers was not the obvious man to take over. Even his local Keighley News reported ‘the name of W.E.Harbord of Wetherby is being freely mentioned’. William Harbord had an impeccable background – Eton and Oxford University – and being born in Rutland had not stopped him playing for Yorkshire. For the seconds in 1931 he made more runs in four innings than Sellers made in seven. On Tuesday, April 5, 1932, the Yorkshire cricket committee meeting in Leeds made Brian Sellers vice-captain, which meant he would skipper when Greenwood could not. In a rare interview for the Yorkshire Post in 1969 Sellers recalled: ‘I didn’t bother to ask how I came to be captain.’ He only needed to ask his father, the committee chairman. Sellers told the Keighley News : ‘It has always been my ambition to play for Yorkshire. I am very glad to be able to follow in my father’s footsteps and I only hope I shall do as well as he has done.’ It was telling that he never spoke of an ambition to captain Yorkshire. As newspapers do, it set out the reasons Sellers gained the job: he was tall and ‘of good physique’; Yorkshire 1920s captain Major AW (Arthur) Lupton.