Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

62 Chapter Six Batsman, fielder, bowler – and England captain? Cricket is a team game in which the individual, nevertheless, at intervals and in his turn, is called upon to assert and exploit his individuality, without ever forgetting his obligation to the team. I hope that does not sound confusing or contradictory. Lionel, Lord Tennyson, Sticky Wickets (1950) Learie Constantine left as long and vivid a picture in words as any of what it was like for a batsman and bowler to face Sellers. At Harrogate in July 1939, Yorkshire were well behind the West Indies on first innings when Sellers walked out to bat, ‘jauntily swinging his bat’ to acknowledge applause. He told Constantine: ‘I am going to beat the guts out of those little slows of yours today, Learie! Better let someone else take a turn.’ Constantine grinned, “for we had a standing engagement for battle after some friendly frictions in the past, and told him ‘not today, not on your life’. I believe I bowled him with the second ball of my next over …” When Constantine came in to bat again, Sellers asked what he was going to do: I said, you will see, Sellers! And the first ball that was sent up to me I drove at him with force enough to have gone clean through him and out the other side – and halfway to Sheffield after it! He got his hands to it and stopped it somehow and I will bet he would have given brass to be able to wring his hands to take the pain out of them, but he only grinned at me and I knew if I did it again somehow he would defy every law of ballistics and catch me out. I need not have worried because I was out a couple of balls later in any case but as I left he added fuel to the fire by saying, ‘didn’t you dare to give me another?’ Note again the difference between Constantine more respectfully using the captain’s surname and Sellers using the player’s first name. Rain next day denied the tourists a likely win. Sellers laughed and said, ‘now you know why God is a Yorkshireman’. After such a full playing career, Constantine’s memory was at fault - in fact Bertie Clarke bowled Sellers (another example of Sellers getting out to a spinner). Constantine had however captured the authentic Sellers: physically hard; priding himself on not showing pain, even though he felt it like anyone else; a chatty, assertive homo ludens. Sellers was like that from the start. In January 1933 he opened an ‘at home’ at Barnoldswick cricket club, inside Lancashire but near Keighley. He gave his two penn’orth about bodyline. He had no