Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

21 Sellers and son he had captained his school eleven aged 16; he was a magnificent cover point fielder, and he had often ‘delighted crowds by his free, polished and vigorous batting’. In truth he was untried, and had not earned a place in the Yorkshire first team. The county was taking less of a risk than it looked. As the Keighley News reported, Greenwood would be captain ‘for a good many matches’. Sellers could be one more stopgap for a season or two, until he tired of being a captain in name only, someone more qualified came along, or like Greenwood he had to put business first. On that score the press reported only that Sellers was a ‘member of the office staff at the Hayfield Mills of JC Horsfall and Sons, Glusburn’, makers of wool yarn outside Keighley. In later life Sellers recalled the details. ‘I had a severe entrée to first-class cricket’: My sister-in-law was living above Glasgow. Before we went up there for Easter, which was early, we went to see sister-in-law’s parents in Scarborough. I felt not at all well – I felt bloody awful and I went to lay on my sister-in-law’s father’s bed. We decided we had better get home, I sent for a doctor and he said I had jaundice and to stay where I was. Dad came to see me on the Monday or Tuesday and he was smiling and I thought, ‘what’s he bloody well got to smile about with me laying on this bed’. He said: ‘I’ve got news for you – the committee in their wisdom or otherwise have appointed you vice-captain.’ ‘Never.’ ‘That’s the decision. I know you’re not good enough, you’re not up to standard, but that’s their decision.’ I went on up to convalesce in Scotland and came back to practice. Even if Brian Sellers was putting his father’s or his own thoughts into his father’s mouth, this was not false modesty. He was not the only man in cricket, let alone anywhere else, who got where he was thanks to who he was, rather than what he did. Robert Scott, the Sussex captain Sellers faced in 1933, was the son of a Sussex vice-president. Sellers was realistic enough to feel unease at the task ahead. As Sellers told the Yorkshire Post in 1969: ‘Let’s face it, there were eight internationals in the side and the others were players of experience. I came along as skipper and rookie. It wasn’t the best way to start but it gave me the incentive to get up to their standard as quickly as possible.’ An example of his unease at this time was his dilemma over his county cap. Vividly, though less suitably for print, in old age Sellers recalled his dealings with the secretary Jack Nash (‘bless him’) and his father. First Nash told Sellers: ‘Your father has instructed me to give you your cap’: I said I shan’t accept it, take it back, I’ve got to earn it. And he said, that’s what your father has instructed me to do and he’ll be angry if I don’t, and I told him, it’s me that’ll get the bollocking when I get home! And by God I did. Dad told me, when I give instructions on behalf of the committee