Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

38 walked out to toss, Holmes stopped at the blackboard that told the spectators which side had won, and turned it as if he had won. Sellers turned it the other way. While the toss might matter, as an affair of pure chance anyone could do it; at a benefit match, the beneficiary did. In July 1937 at Bradford Park Avenue, Arthur Mitchell won with Sellers’ ‘lucky four shilling piece’. Even at this stage of a match, Sellers could try hard, whether to seek advantage or simply wind up the other captain. A coin tossed by Arthur Carr, of Nottinghamshire and England, glanced off a wooden bench: Obviously I could not control the fall of the coin in any way because this happened and it was the same for both sides. When Sellars [sic] claimed that it was a ‘foul’ I did not agree but I tossed again and again won the toss. You would not like me to toss again for you, would you, I am afraid I said, somewhat sarcastically. Andrew Sellers recalled his father ‘was good at that, just getting somebody going a bit’. Crying foul at the toss did work sometimes. In 1938 Yorkshire’s opening match of the season against MCC at Lord’s began 15 minutes late, officially ‘due to a disagreement regarding the validity of the first toss won by the MCC. The captains tossed again and Yorkshire won.’ Somerset player Frank Lee recalled how Sellers trespassed both physically – entering the home professionals’ dressing room at Taunton – and culturally when in July 1946 he told the umpires he wanted to see and select the balls for that game, ‘a most unusual practice’. Sellers, missing Bowes, was perhaps trying to overawe the home players, to make up for his weak bowlers. ‘The box containing the balls was duly produced,’ Lee wrote, “and Sellers instructed the umpires, ‘we shall use that one to start with, this ball to follow on and this other one should the need arise.’” Somerset made 508 before rain caused a draw. On and off the field overlapped, most obviously when the players passed to and from the pavilion to the field. In his 1941 profile of Sellers, Robertson-Glasgow praised Sellers’ perfect attitude to the game. He was generous in victory and ‘in defeat, which is rare, he is more generous still’. Because any defeat of Yorkshire was news, reporters noted how Yorkshire took it. On 30 August 1946, Yorkshire lost for the first time since 1939, at Bournemouth. Sellers was first to shake the hand of Hampshire’s captain, Desmond Eagar, who was batting. You could say that Yorkshire had already won that season’s Championship, and could afford to lose. Not so at Lord’s in June 1937. Sellers, the not out batsman when Yorkshire lost by an innings, walked over to Middlesex captain Walter Robins and shook hands. Likewise in June 1939 at Bristol when the Gloucestershire crowd slapped Wally Hammond and Jack Crapp on the back after they made the winning runs; the Yorkshire fielders joined in the clapping. To beat Yorkshire was an even bigger deal for an also-ran county like Worcestershire. On a spinner’s pitch at Stourbridge, Yorkshire lost by 11 runs in May 1936. Sellers praised the winners’ fighting spirit to Berrow’s Worcester Journal : ‘A few years ago, your team would have lost that match easily.’ Much the same happened in July 1939. The cheering home crowd On the field