Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

28 The line that disciplines the fell Jack Hobbs. In June 1932 at Bristol, when Sutcliffe went for a run that wasn’t there, and ended up beside his fellow opener Wilf Barber, the other man stepped out of his crease, to give up his wicket for the senior man. And yet Sutcliffe was a batsman like any other. ‘Sleek Herbert’ C.B.Fry called him; ‘imperturably imperial’ according to Howard Marshall in the Daily Telegraph in 1937; ‘not so sprightly as in days gone by’ said the Northampton Chronicle and Echo in 1939, even as the 44-year-old made a century. Like others, Arthur Mailey the Australian spinner saw a contradiction in ‘Herby’ Sutcliffe; he ‘was never a pro at heart, although his style of batting suggested it’. Off the field, too, he appeared of a high rank; mayoral. He attended winter cricket dinners like Sellers and other players; only he was invited to speak at an Oxford luncheon club. Given this man looked and acted like a captain, but was not captain, we might expect that Sutcliffe did not get on with Sellers. Many have repeated the story of how Sutcliffe as the senior professional, that the others looked to, made everyone wait while Sellers stood embarrassingly alone in the middle at Lord’s, because Sellers did not see his men in their (separate) dressing room before taking the field. That was not so much a defiance of Sellers as an insisting that everyone – including the captain – knew their place. When Sutcliffe died, Sellers paid tribute to the ‘great help’ Sutcliffe gave him as captain. Sutcliffe in his 1935 autobiography, For England and Yorkshire , seemingly wrote well enough of Sellers ‘as one of the best fieldsmen in the game, and, in addition, he is a batsman of ability as he showed in the game with the Australians at Sheffield last season, for then he scored a fighting century when runs were needed.’ What Sutcliffe did not say – anything about Sellers as captain – was as significant; as was his judgement that a young captain ‘must be prepared when he enters county cricket to spend five years in learning his job’. By that reckoning, Sellers was then still a learner. Sutcliffe also talked up A.T.Barber, who captained Yorkshire to third in 1930, as a ‘first-class’ and ‘great’ captain. Was that Sutcliffe’s way of putting Sellers in his place? In later life Sellers did admit to one clash, on a big subject; money. The thing had always been that all the first team were on the same pay – Herbert Sutcliffe and Cyril Turner [a useful but far from regularly playing all-rounder] got the same and Herbert never disagreed with this for instance. The committee used to offer £200 a season to me to distribute as talent money - £200 among say 14 players …. this was the only occasion that Herbert was not very pleased – he would get about £15. In other words, Sutcliffe felt he didn’t get his due. Did he feel he should have been captain? According to Leslie Duckworth, who met Sutcliffe in the late 1960s for his book The Run Stealers , Sutcliffe wished he had Herbert Sutcliffe.