Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

79 Lord’s might not want the game to change; but it could hardly order everyone to go back to the people they were in 1939. Experiences changed men; and even if some men did not change, other men, that were changed, would affect them. In his 1997 book Talking Cricket , Fred Trueman told a wartime story – a sign of how long they can go the rounds – of the Nottinghamshire batsman Charlie Harris, who played at Lord’s for an Army team captained by Sellers. Because Sellers told his men to be smart and correct, Harris mischievously came to attention and marched to his fielding position each over. He was risking a confrontation with Sellers by clowning; but like all clowns, Harris was pointing out a truth; the similarity in discipline between a sports team and a military unit. Whether a man took to uniformed life might depend on how similar it was to his life before. There are few records of Sellers’ years in the Army, whether because he did little or because it was the done thing not to make anything of your service, in case it looked like boasting. Sellers did play for, and arrange and captain, teams that played around the country, in aid of charity, often in front of large crowds. The men, usually in services teams, were mixed, as presumably was the quality of the one-day matches. We cannot read much into any batting or bowling, such as Sellers’ 114 at Epsom in June 1943 in a 12-a-side match between Monty Garland-Wells’ team and locals, though each side had several current or future county players. The cricketers were keeping their eye in, and their matches served to keep cricket flickering, like a candle after a power cut. More ominous was that by 1944 Sellers had become a major, one rank above a captain in the Army. After years of telling men in uniform what to do, on returning to Yorkshire in charge of men in whites, without older men over him such as Lord Hawke and his father, Sellers would have ever fewer brakes on him in the county club. He would have only himself to rely on that his leadership did not become tyranny, and that his judgement was sound. Wartime Brian Sellers’ MBE for wartime service, in the possession of his daughter-in-law Anne Sellers.