Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

51 On the field This story has all the earthiness and meaning of a parable in the gospels: the quick thinking of Booth, knowing he had to pretend to have a reason to put his hands in his pockets; Sellers, who let Booth know he had seen (and understood) everything; and those watching, who were alive to everything as if it were theatre. As Booth presumably told the story against himself, that spoke of a community across generations, even while men inside the group were of differing rank; notice that the man in the crowd used Booth’s first name – as a familiar, assuming they were of the same class – and Sellers’ surname, implying social distance. Most telling of all was Bird’s last line, the moral of the story, and that apparently casual, but in truth deeply felt, use of ‘mister’. Poignantly, Bird was showing his respect for the older man, even long after his death, and although such things no longer mattered to many. In two of the fullest and most insightful studies of Sellers, the batsmen Willie Watson and Ted Lester – who began under him – also gave the example of keeping hands out of pockets. Sellers insisted partly for the sake of appearances. Even if you were tired or hot, you never sat or lay on the field, when a batsman was out; that showed weakness and might give the new batsman confidence. Above all, because he was not a man who mistook style for substance, Sellers wanted his fielders alert for practical reasons: ‘Often he would make discreet signals to his fielders. He would give the signal once. He would even give it twice, but never would he give it a third time. He would just wheel round on the fielder and roar at him,’ Watson recalled. Appearances, such as smartness in dress, mattered too because wherever Sellers’ last first class match, Scarborough festival against MCC, September 1948. Left to right: Coxon, Wardle, Brennan, Smailes, Yardley, Sellers, Lester, Hutton, Halliday, Wilson, Foord (looking rather detached). Contrast their neatness with the Gloucestershire team of 1934 on the same spot.