Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

26 players or other counties. It is so frantic, you see. In 1930 Notts looked certain champs and then there was that car crash involving I think Larwood, Bill Voce and Wheat. Yorkshire banned motor cars below Birmingham – the southern tour excepted as it was so hard to get there by train – such long, weary train journeys then, we’d get into the next port of call two or three in the bloody morning and you’d lose the toss and go straight into the field after you’d had a day in the field the day before. They’d know – it was part of the game – we all did it to each other. But oh – those glorious Sundays ... It was the highlight that after an evening meal you went for a pint with the opposition, you developed friendships, you listened. As in other occupations whose workers gather in the pub after a shift, you did not stop working. As Sellers hinted, cricketers were picking up what rivals had to say, and rubbing in any advantage. Yardley recalled after the first day of the crucial August 1946 draw against Middlesex, Sellers and Arthur Booth put on 60 for the ninth wicket, that proved enough to give Yorkshire the first innings points. Walter Robins the Middlesex captain was furious: That evening, Sellers offered Robins a drink. He said he would have a gin, to which Sellers instantly responded, ‘Booth’s, presumably?’ Brian Sellers is one of the quickest-witted cricketers I have ever met, and Yorkshire is the right place for such a man; his quips were gathered after every match and sent flying all round the County, to the accompaniment of laughter and much banging of pint pots. The line that disciplines the fell Yorkshire past and present players at their annual golf day, at Ilkley, Tuesday 3 October 1933. At the back, Scorer Ringrose, George Hirst, Arthur Dolphin, unknowns, Brian Sellers, Emmett Robinson, unknowns – presumably golfers? The ever-dapper Herbert Sutcliffe stands to the left of the cup. At the front are David Denton, Wilf Barber, Arthur Wood, Maurice Leyland, Percy Holmes and Frank Dennis.