Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

93 Last seasons 1946-48 had never known such a long break. Like commuters in a train strike reminding themselves how to ride a bicycle, whoever got the hang of the old routine first would do best. Only seven of the 17 counties still had their pre-war captains: besides Sellers, T.N.Pearce (Essex), J.C.Clay (Glamorgan), Hammond (Gloucestershire), Robins (Middlesex), George Heane (Nottinghamshire), Bunty Longrigg (Somerset) and Peter Cranmer (Warwickshire). Note that the champions in the first four post-war seasons came from those counties, suggesting teams recovered soonest under an old hand. In their first match at Cambridge, the spinners Arthur Booth, Ellis Robinson and Len Hutton took 14 wickets as Yorkshire crushed the university by an innings. Yorkshire beat Glamorgan at Cardiff, where Robinson and Booth took 16 wickets, then Kent by an innings. Next came Oxford University. The Oxford Mail printed a photo of Sellers, having won the toss, taking the field in gauntlets and pads, because wicket-keeper Paul Gibb had a bruised forefinger. The gloves sat unfamiliarly on Sellers, as if he were about to take a casserole out of an oven. As Kilburn put it delicately in the Yorkshire Post , Robinson turned the ball enough for Sellers ‘to appreciate some of the stresses and distresses of wicket- keeping’. Sellers then top scored with 60, in two and a quarter hours, and with only three fours, while Leyland, batting at eight and limping, made 30 ‘from what he could reach’. While Yorkshire won easily enough by six wickets, the Oxford Mail saw ‘little of the aggressiveness normally associated with Yorkshire cricket’. After four wins in four matches, a more hopeful editorial in the Yorkshire Post pointed to some fast scoring, sure fielding, a ‘bowling attack that is formidable indeed’, and a promise by Sellers of ‘brighter cricket’. Whether the shortcomings or promises would win out would depend, as ever, at least partly on how good the other counties were. Rain ruined the first two matches in June, draws against Gloucestershire and Lancashire. Already the pattern for the season was setting: Yorkshire had only Hutton in the country’s leading ten batsmen by average, yet three bowlers, Booth, Robinson and Bowes, were among the leading ten bowlers. Yorkshire could keep winning if their batsmen merely made enough runs, and their out-cricket held – and at Lord’s for instance when they beat Middlesex in a low-scoring match in mid-June, they took one catch from a ball that bounced off square leg’s head. The Times praised their ‘ruthless determination’. After Yorkshire trailed badly on first innings against Glamorgan at Sheffield, Hutton’s 99 not out brought a six-wicket win. Sellers was still setting the standard in the field; the Sheffield Telegraph reported how he ‘dashed forward from backward point to make a one handed catch almost from the face of Emrys Davies’ bat’. Two months into the season, Heyhirst the club masseur was already busy with pulled thigh muscles. Hutton again top scored in the second innings when Yorkshire won by four wickets at Chesterfield. Hutton made 183 not out as Yorkshire crushed the touring Indians at Bradford by an innings. Six batsmen chipped in for Yorkshire to beat Surrey by six wickets at Headingley. Yorkshire drew with the Indians at Sheffield. Now in mid-July, at about halfway in the