Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

77 Wartime The front line was a place for young men; yet Verity was a couple of years older than Sellers. Just as Sellers, 32 at the outbreak of war, stood about halfway on the sportsmen’s spectrum of how much the war interrupted his playing career, so he stood about halfway on the spectrum of how useful his war duty was. Sellers was neither one of the few genuinely on the front line (Bill Edrich) nor one of the most outrageous shirkers (such as Cardus). As early as October 1939, Sellers, Smailes and Leyland were in photographs in newspapers as gunners in an anti-aircraft unit. That early in the war, fears of bombing were genuine, and such service was worthy. As newspapers were recalling as late as Verity’s death, under Sellers the Yorkshire team set an example by joining the forces at the opening of the war, when – it’s easy to forget now – the country flinched from another war. If Sellers faced any moral test - grotesque and pointless though it is for us to ask – he passed it then. Nor was Sellers doing anything different from his wider peers; when he captained an Anti-Aircraft Command team at Lord’s in May 1943 that beat a team from Balloon Command (that is, static anti-aircraft balloons), among the 22 were his colleague Cyril Turner and such county players as T.N.Pearce, M.D.Lyon, Jack Parker and Alec Bedser. Such posts did prove less dangerous than the life of an infantryman, pilot or seaman. Just as returned soldiers from any war find that civilians do not want to know about their battles, let alone thank them, so Sellers and others did not get credit for their peacetime achievements that peaked on the eve of war. Wisden’s Almanack for 1940 made Sellers one of their five cricketers of the year – that is, 1939 – alongside Constantine, Bill Edrich, Keeton and Doug Wright. Nothing was normal any more – that year’s edition did not come out until June – and as Robertson-Glasgow noted inside, to Joining an anti-aircraft unit in 1939: Maurice Leyland, Frank Smailes, unknown, Brian Sellers.