Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

25 The line that disciplines the fell take excellent play; hard to make routine. Throughout the 1930s – and before and after – watchers called for ‘brighter cricket’. The Worcester journalist T.B.Duckworth for instance grumbled in May 1936: ‘Much of modern cricket is apt to be somewhat stereotyped. Often one match is much like another with nothing to lift it above the common level and soon fades into the forgotten.’ He had hit upon the profound dilemma of modern sport: how could players be consistently exciting, to consistently excite spectators, when they were tired and carrying injuries? How could they make the extraordinary out of the ordinary, what they were doing week after week? To return to Sellers’ first match at Oxford, Verity only bowled five overs in the first innings because of a cut on the top joint of his bowling finger, ‘a trivial affair which should be right in a day or two’. In July 1938, when Middlesex beat Yorkshire inside two days at Lord’s, in their second innings Hutton (broken finger) and Gibb (cut and bandaged head) could not bat and the impact of ball on bat jarred Leyland’s dislocated thumb so much he had to retire. Again, other teams’ bowlers injured their muscles and batsmen broke bones. Yorkshire only had themselves to blame if they fielded so close that the ball hit them. Also in July 1938, Phil King (a Yorkshireman who had qualified for Worcestershire) pulled Bowes, ‘striking [Ellis] Robinson at short fine leg a hard blow on the chest which felled him to the ground. He was assisted to his feet and desirous of resuming but A.B.Sellers ordered him to the pavilion and called out the 12 th man Johnson. Apparently the damage was not serious for he returned later,’ and indeed bowled King. Here Yorkshire helped themselves by hiring a masseur, Bright Heyhirst, the Leeds rugby league club trainer. Kilburn credited Sellers with having the committee pay for ‘that invaluable extra man carried by Yorkshire’, as Bowes called him in a 1950 book. At Bradford in July 1937 Yorkshire had to carry Robinson off the field in agony when he stopped a Laurie Fishlock drive; after half an hour of what the Sheffield Telegraph called ‘Heyhirst’s prompt and expert attention’, Robinson was back on the field (and took six wickets and made Surrey follow on). Men shrugged off much else. In June 1934 at Sheffield, when Sussex won by an innings – Yorkshire were without Bowes, Leyland, Sutcliffe and Verity, who were beating Australia at Lord’s – Sellers was hit on the finger, ‘which has now been sore for a fortnight through continued knocks’, the Sheffield Telegraph reported. One of Sellers’ jobs as captain – besides setting a good example – was to keep everyone going. Sellers’ strength of coaxing wins out of players also hid a weakness, that Brian Close shared 30 years later; each man preferred the player with experience, rather than having to take time and trouble over a newcomer. That would explain why Joseph Johnson, a slow-left arm bowler, only ever bowled a dozen overs when he played three times in the later 1930s when Verity was away. At Nottingham in August 1938 while Verity was playing in the timeless Test, Johnson did not bowl at all; yet Nottinghamshire batted for 151.1 overs. The players could look forward to something; the Sabbath. In old age Sellers reflected: There is no Sunday rest – no golf, no relaxation, no friendships with other