Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

84 Treachery in Australia 1946/47 India – the Evening Post printed Sellers’ first article, on the prospects for the tour. Naturally, as one of the selectors, he talked up their chances. He saw ‘stacks of runs in the batting’, including ‘of course the master, the great Hammond’. As for the bowling, Alec Bedser was ‘in for a lot of hard work’ and Doug Wright was the likely spearhead; otherwise, it proved pitifully, and predictably, weak. Even before the event, Sellers was excusing the choices: Bill Voce, who had turned 37 (‘true, we haven’t seen a lot of him since the war’), the 40-year-old James Langridge and 34-year- old Dick Pollard (‘stock bowlers’) and the little-bowled Jack Ikin (‘may bowl better than some think possible’). While, as he admitted, ‘a fairly old team’ – the median age was 32 - it did have ‘a vast amount of experience’ and yet many new to Australia. In fairness, as MCC had not toured there for ten years, thanks to war, the selectors could not help that. For the first time the tourists had a masseur: ‘a small but in my view after my experience with Yorkshire an important point’. They had ‘every chance to win’, Sellers said, and the bowlers ‘might cause a surprise’; and in any case winning was ‘not of paramount importance’. Like the Australian Services team in the Victory summer of 1945, this tour was to encourage cricket. That sounded odd, coming from Sellers. They were about to find out that Australia needed no encouraging. Also odd, and something the Post made much of, was Sellers’ conflict of interest. He was giving his ‘expert estimate’ as the man who selected the 17. When the newspaper got its man, it called him ‘our Test writer’; naturally, because it wanted its money’s worth. Yet how could he criticise the men he had chosen? If he only said kind things, would he be a proper reporter? A man cannot serve two masters; which is probably why so few selectors have been reporters. In reply to the MCC’s 506 for five, Bradman made 76; ‘batting practice with an eye on the future’, Sellers called it. Because Bradman had injured his groin slightly while fielding, ‘the quick singles The MCC selectors, 1946: left to right, Walter Robins, Walter Hammond, AJ Holmes and Brian Sellers.