Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

44 Paul Gibb on to bowl ‘rubbish’ so that he could claim the new ball sooner. Sellers ‘could afford to give away many runs whereas he dare not waste many minutes. That point did not appear to be generally recognised but [Monty] Cranfield [Gloucestershire’s number ten] spotted it and played to defeat the ruse. Strategy plays an important part in cricket and A.B.Sellars [sic] has a pretty good knowledge of the finer points of captaincy.’ Gibb in fact had Cranfield leg before and Gloucestershire lost just before 6 pm. If the first few batsmen did well against Yorkshire, the later ones for many counties could not; and Yorkshire never gave up. More wickets might never be far away. Worcestershire in July 1934 for example lunched at 94 for two; then three wickets fell, including Bernard Quaife, run out by Sellers after answering a call late. In the return match a month later on a reportedly dead pitch at Bradford, Sidney Martin and Frank Warne defied Yorkshire for three hours after Worcestershire were ten for four. Sellers kept changing his six regular bowlers, then turned to Wilf Barber, who had only taken a couple of wickets in a season. First ball, Barber had Warne caught behind, and in his next over had the new bat Reg Perks stumped. Barber only bowled one more Championship over that summer. Even when you were doing well against Yorkshire, you had to beware. As the Bristol Evening World sports columnist Phil Barnes warned in June 1939 – after the first day’s play, when Yorkshire were all out 176 and Gloucestershire well placed on 71 for one – ‘You never know with Yorkshire’. They were resilient. The Times reckoned in June 1946: ‘If ever there can be anything certain in cricket, the most variable of games, it is that a Yorkshire team is in its most dangerous mood when it is threatened with humiliation.’ After Yorkshire were out for a mere 140 at Lord’s, Middlesex were out for 74, including ‘Compton snapped up sharply by Sellers at short-leg’. Yorkshire won by 73 runs, comfortably in a low-scoring match. On the field Wilf Barber and Brian Sellers.