Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

72 a small sporting printer in Bradford, and they thought that might be ideal for him, because of his sporting contacts and he said yes, it was a good idea, but he would not go in unless he had his brother who was an accountant with him, because my father didn’t have a great sense of money. Godfrey, also an accountant, ran The Yorkdale Press in the summer, ‘and it seemed to work quite well in that respect’, Andrew said. Indeed he and his brother David went into the business: ‘I think the three-day week [in the 1970s] killed it off.’ The Yorkshire finance committee minutes show regular payments to the firm for ‘general printing’. While the club did use other printers, a detail from August 1935 suggests that it showed favouritism towards Sellers’ company. The committee recommended accepting another firm’s quotation of £450 for printing the 1936 yearbook and membership tickets, only for the general committee to ask finance to think again. It duly picked Yorkdale, although its quote totalled £472. If anyone was at fault, it was the club for giving the work, not Yorkdale for taking it. Altogether more dubious was another captain, Ronnie Burnet; the finance committee made him resign in 1968 for holding on to money from sales of Jimmy Binks’ and Raymond Illingworth’s benefit ties. Was it unfair to give any man only one chance to prove himself? Did Sellers lack that indefinable ‘big match temperament’; or did he fall short of the minimum of ability you needed to make a Test eleven? It must have added to the excitement before another big match eight weeks later; between the champions Yorkshire and the challengers Middlesex. Robins made the challenge by telegram in late August. Sellers wired back to accept, offering stakes of £10 per man and asked Robins to choose the ground. It might sound harmless enough today, and certainly it ‘caught the public fancy’, as Country Life magazine wrote, as an end to ‘a season of gay and Everyone’s an expert: A Yorkshire Evening Post cartoon, August 1938, on the England Test selectors. Batsman, fielder, bowler – and England captain?