Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

75 Chapter Seven Wartime ‘Tis to die like a beast for a man to leave no memory behind. Blaise de Montluc, The Habsburg-Valois War and the French Wars of Religion In old age Sellers said: Herbert Sutcliffe was certainly the greatest batsman I saw, yet but for the war what might have happened for Len [Hutton] and Compton and Edrich and Washbrook – six years lost to batsmen who would have been in their prime in that time. It would be thoughtless to feel sorry for sportsmen not able to show their talent for a few years, while millions were homeless, bereaved and killed; and as someone who went through the war, Sellers was not crass enough to press the point. Kilburn wrote of Yorkshire that ‘a great cricket team broke up’ in September 1939. True; except many families, and communities, broke up thanks to that war. Within cricket, the Second World War, like 1914-18, was more than a break to the county round; conscription, evacuation and shortages of goods prevented schools’ matches, coaching in the Headingley ‘shed’, even fathers playing with sons in back gardens and schoolmates playing in yards. In total wars like those if 1914-18 and 1939-45, to attempt to live as in peacetime might be an aid to the enemy. While every county suffered, Yorkshire, further from the Nazi-held Continent, was freer to play cricket than some counties. In truth the Yorkshire eleven as led by Sellers was due to break up anyway, merely because of age. Of the 13 men that played in one of the last two matches of 1939, only two, Hutton and Yardley, were under 28. In an era when all sorts of county cricketers, not only slow bowlers, could hope to hold their place until 40, about half the team, including Sellers, had years left in them; not so the wicket-keeper Wood, 41; and the batsmen Barber, 38; Mitchell and Turner, 37; Leyland, 39; and Sutcliffe, 44. As Leyland played one last season in 1946, then retired, we can speculate that he might have gone sooner, but for the war. In other words, the war may in fact have postponed the break-up of the team Sellers found himself with in 1946. Even an ideal side like Sellers’ has to keep renewing itself; the very success of an ageing team may cause worse decline later if it does not take in younger men in good time. The war interrupted that balance. It meant Yorkshire could not test the next generation, men such as Wardle and Jim Laker; nor bring on those that had reached the first team by 1939, such as Willie Watson. The balance had two sides; the older players passed on