Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

74 time for Middlesex after a 30-year career. Sellers shook his hand and led his team in three cheers. Middlesex lost by an innings inside three days of a four-day match. ‘I doubt if anybody will challenge Yorkshire again,’ wrote Cardus. Not all were so crabby; many of the crowd gathered outside the pavilion to cheer Yorkshire and called for the captain. Hammond in 1938 turned amateur and became England captain. Sellers became a selector, as the northerner on the committee. Sellers had already played a part of sorts in England selection on Saturday 13 July 1935. The story is well known; Leyland had a bad back before the Third Test against South Africa at Leeds. Sellers drove to Arthur Mitchell’s home in Baildon, a dozen miles away. Mitchell was in his garden, about to enjoy some rest; by 1 pm he was batting for England. Less known is the primitive – by more connected 21 st century standards – way the authorities tried to find Mitchell. A blackboard carried around Headingley asked Arthur Mitchell of Yorkshire to go to the pavilion. In old age Sellers recalled: Today I think fame comes too quickly – and so does rejection. Take Bill Edrich before the war ... we knew he had the ability and we had to have patience for our judgement. No player would have got the chance today that he got. But we knew he was world class. Well he had a bloody awful series against Australia [in 1938] and we sent him to South Africa and he had a bloody awful tour until the last game when he got 200 and some, in the last, the timeless Test – the last one [overseas] before war broke out. A 1930s cartoon of Brian Sellers; truly a larger than life figure?! Batsman, fielder, bowler – and England captain?