Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

40 On the field day; instead Yorkshire batted, slowly, and declared and settled for a draw. The News said: ‘No, no Yorkshire! That is not what we expect from a county of your standing and it must have been a mistake on the part of Sellers.’ The newspaper did not ask Sellers; instead it speculated that Sellers was saving his men after a day in the field, and gave them batting practice before they faced Lancashire at Leeds the next day. Sellers, then, did, and said, everything for a reason. As late as April 1956, when The Times previewed the counties, it wrote of how Surrey was reviving Sellers’ approach of the 1930s, ‘interested only in final victory’. When fielding, that meant taking wickets. Ray Lindwall quoted Sellers characteristically making his point with humour: ‘We always see that anyone taking a benefit match gets one off the mark … and we often give away singles, so that we can shift a batsman to the end we want him!’ Some compared the two. ‘How often have Yorkshire been described as the Australians of England?’ the Sheffield Telegraph asked rhetorically in June 1934, while the Australians were playing in the city. Sellers made plain that Yorkshire played to win, as he told the dinner for Hutton’s 364; and ‘if they lost they lost like men’. Like so many remarks, that hinted at two sides; how Sellers defined his masculinity, and how he and Yorkshire came across to others. What Sellers and Robins said to the press before their 1937 challenge match showed Yorkshire hardness and how it contrasted with other, more polite, counties. Robins said that he hoped to win; Sellers simply said: ‘Easy, no trouble.’ Like so much in this story, the hardness that Sellers stood for stretched into the Victorian past and long after him. Nottinghamshire had not beaten Yorkshire at Brian Sellers.