Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

24 The line that disciplines the fell set up the innings. In this, as in other ways, Sellers’ Yorkshire resembled the outstanding Australian team of around 2000. In each case, some – such as the then London Evening News journalist E.M.Wellings – reckoned that the side captained itself. It sounded plausible, and appealed to the vanity of the other ten. The more informed Johnny Wardle in his 1957 memoir called that ignorant, ‘because there is no side so good that it is not the better for having a great captain’. Jim Kilburn agreed that Sellers inherited success, ‘and by doing nothing he could scarcely have failed to acquire a Championship or two; he did much more than that’. Sellers mattered for several reasons. The very excellence of Yorkshire’s players meant that England called on them more. Discounting the washed- out Manchester Test of 1938 (the rain ruined Yorkshire’s home match anyway) and the single Test against All-India in 1932 (when Yorkshire gave three players, Kent and Surrey two each, and other counties one), in the 26 home Test matches between 1933 and 1939, Yorkshire filled 71 player places. Next came Gloucestershire with 38 (mostly Walter Hammond), Middlesex with 36, Kent 29 (mostly Les Ames) and Lancashire 18. Yorkshire most obviously lost more players than other counties in 1934, an unusually full summer of five Tests against Australia, by filling 17 places; next came Worcestershire, Kent and Middlesex with six each. Lancashire, the 1934 champions, only filled two places. Yorkshire came fifth, their least successful pre-war season under Sellers. Derbyshire, champions in 1936, seldom lost their best men, filling only ten places over the period. Apart from Yorkshire, only Gloucestershire could ever feel deprived; once, in 1937, when they filled eight places in three Tests, and came fourth in the Championship. Other handicaps were common to all. Playing typically two three-day matches a week might mean a long train journey from one ground to the next. In August 1947, for example, Yorkshire left Scarborough on Friday after drawing with Derbyshire and arrived in Worcester in the small hours. When the local daily newspaper said ‘the visitors gained a big advantage by winning the toss’, it might have meant Yorkshire batted first on a cracked pitch; or, most of the team could put their feet up. Over a season, every team had to do the same, and first-class cricket had always been like that; ‘toil’, Lord Hawke called it in his 1924 memoir. Yorkshire – like other teams – did not make it easier for themselves by playing extra matches for whoever’s benefit year it was. For example, on Tuesday evening, 20 August 1946 – after drawing a crucial match against Middlesex at Bramall Lane, Sheffield – the Yorkshire players drove a good 20 miles to Sprotborough, the Sheffield side of Doncaster, for a Wilf Barber testimonial game. Sellers and his men understood what a season would take out of them. During their second match of 1937, at Oxford, while the team dined with the university’s new Yorkshire Society, Sellers said: ‘We have a long way to go but I hope that at the finish we shall not be very far from the top. That of course depends on how the other counties treat us.’ To end a summer as champions a team had to win most matches. That would