Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

35 The line that disciplines the fell captain, chairman of selectors, chairman of the committee, was a virtual dictator,’ Robinson said in later life. Arlott in old age likewise looked back on ‘a strange, feudal world’, of ‘tyranny’ of senior professionals over juniors, and by some amateur captains over all professionals. And yet, as in wider society, at least in such a tyranny, everyone knew their place. Even if the lowest-ranked men felt put upon, at least they could feel they had prospects of rising. For how else do men know that they are of a higher rank, unless they have someone of lower rank to order around – to mind their bags and suitcases? Captains, as E.W.Swanton recalled, could play more subtle parts than mere tyrants; the best ‘were very much the guardians of their flocks’. That condescending metaphor – likening the players to sheep – says much about Swanton, and his generation and class. Though seldom spelt out – because that would put workers on a par with the bosses – Swanton, Sellers and his kind were not crediting the likes of Robinson with feelings. The Yorkshire committee man Sid Fielden, who knew Robinson, recalled him saying: ‘I wish he [Sellers] would have liked me a bit.’ The tragedy is not only that Robinson felt unwanted – although that evidently mattered to Robinson, a man of mood swings, ‘either in the clouds or way down in the dumps’, as came out in a March 1947 drink-driving court case. It’s a reminder that the men under Sellers, as in any sports team or any group, were human; that is to say, imperfect. As it happens, Fielden (who knew Sellers also) thought that Sellers did like Robinson. The tragedy lies in Robinson looking to his captain for feelings. Sellers, if he did really like anyone, could not show it, for then he would have favourites. Team equality, for Sellers, meant treating men equally roughly. As Robinson knew from the hurt of being cast out of the first team, even after winning a match for Yorkshire, the team came before any single man; it had to, if Yorkshire were to be better than the rest. Poignantly, Robinson could not help but wish for love. Eleven outstanding cricketers are not the same as a champion team. The eleven had to agree to set tactics – keeping match-winning always in mind while doing the routines of batting, or bowling and fielding – and strategy, keeping a longer Championship-minded, perspective. Someone also had to set the tempo; to put it another way, Sellers was like the coachman flogging the horses. It’s a truth seldom admitted, because who wants to think of themselves as no better than whipped animals? Yet the same is true in politics, and business, perhaps any field of life; to get anything extraordinary done, the one in charge, the one with the ideas, has to bully others - who draw their pay no matter what – into giving more. The very fact that this team did such great things together, awakened a sense that they were special, that could prompt the players to feel warmly towards each other. Ironically, Yorkshire could only win, and keep winning, by shunning such feelings, as sentimental, and unhelpful. Not the least of Sellers’ tasks as captain was to tread on anything that might weaken them; to be the line that disciplines the fell. If you defied the skipper or did badly on the field, ‘you didn’t last very long’; so Robinson recalled. Someone could always take the place of another. Sellers, appointed one year at a time, had no more job security than