Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

58 Off the field on as usual.’ Whenever Sellers made the decision – Kilburn implied it happened sooner than the Friday morning, perhaps even before the match – and for whatever reason, Sellers was thinking of others than himself and his men: whether the paying public (‘the bread and butter of your benefit’) or a fellow professional seeking money for his benefit. By doing others a good turn, Yorkshire could reasonably hope for good in return. Kilburn went on simply and movingly to describe how Yorkshire took the first innings lead and the match – as true professionals – and took a coach to Leeds. ‘Goodbyes were brief and dispersal was without ceremony.’ Perhaps Sellers’ lack of ceremony when giving a county cap was only part of a deeper masculine culture of leaving even the deepest emotion best unsaid. For on 1 September 1939, as Kilburn wrote: ‘Not a cricket season, but a cricket era was over.’ How Yorkshire behaved on the outbreak of world war was only how they behaved usually. At Leicester in August 1946, Yorkshire players carried around collection boxes for Norman Armstrong; at Hove in 1934, Sellers officiated at the raffle for Tich Cornford’s benefit. In August 1947, Sellers unusually chose not to make Worcestershire follow on, though Yorkshire led by 247 on first innings (and in their eventual second innings Worcestershire only made 132). According to the Worcester Times and News , ‘this gesture was presumably for Perks’ benefit’, as Reg Perks had chosen the match for his benefit. As Sellers’ three main bowlers were either in their late 30s (Bowes and Robinson) or in only their third full month of county cricket (Wardle), Sellers may have had in mind only a rest for his team, so late in the season, knowing that a win would be no less likely. At least it did not seem ridiculous to print that Sellers might bat again, to prolong a match so that more people paid to watch. Perhaps Sellers only thought of winning all along. At Scarborough in August 1939, in the same position, almost to the run, Sellers did the same. ‘To the majority of people his policy was inexplicable’, th e Birmingham Post said; it speculated that Sellers felt the pitch would wear more to suit his spinners even more. Sellers declared after only 33 overs, when Yardley was 83 not out, having made 108 in the first innings; Sellers evidently closed an innings when it suited him and the team, and did not allow batsmen even a few extra minutes to reach a milestone. Such a prompt decision served more than one purpose. Besides making the win more likely – and Warwickshire were only out the next day with 25 minutes (and the extra half hour) to spare - it told the world, and reminded the players, that to Yorkshire winning mattered above all. Only 36 days before, Sellers had let Yardley open against weak Northamptonshire, so that he could find form; as he had. Again, Kilburn best explained Yorkshire cricket. The county did best – under Lord Hawke, then Sellers, then Close – when players were not allowed to be satisfied with themselves. Playing for Yorkshire, let alone captaining it, was not an end in itself. Kilburn wrote in old age in 1975: ‘Sellers and his players constructed a close community of ideals and interests’; an ideology, to use a word popular in the 1930s, when communism and fascism were all the rage. In the style of the lifelong newspaper reporter that he was, Kilburn summed