Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

95 Last seasons 1946-48 wickets fell for 418 runs inside two days. Middlesex, the other challengers for the Championship, came to Sheffield. On the first day Sellers won the toss and went into bat at 63 for five. He made 85 not out of the last 163, which Kilburn hailed as ‘truly noble’: ‘He was completely competent in defence and aggression, gave no chance and hit four fours and the crowd of 19,000 rose to cheer at the end of it all.’ From 111 for eight, Sellers added 60 with Arthur Booth, who made 29, his career high score. Booth batted one above Bowes but, until his 29, was set, like Bowes, to take more wickets that season than make runs. Even more improbably, Bowes made nine and added 55 with Sellers for the last wicket. Yorkshire took first innings points and began the final day on 82 for two, 139 ahead, seeking quick runs. However after an hour they were 130 for six, and risked defeat. Sellers again made top score of 53, and set Middlesex 260 in three hours. Sellers claimed the last half hour – after losing the first hour of the day to overnight rain – but Yorkshire could only take three of Middlesex’s five last wickets. Fourteen more wickets for Booth and Robinson, and Yorkshire beat Gloucestershire at Headingley; three matches to go. At Eastbourne, Yorkshire trailed Sussex on first innings, 82 to 91. Early on the second day, Monday 26 August, Sussex set Yorkshire 115 to win the match and the Championship. Yorkshire lunched on 34 for four. Sussex scented victory, Kilburn reported. Leyland defended while Frank Smailes attacked and ended on 67 not out, his highest score of the season. Yorkshire won by six wickets. They had become champions for the eighth time in the last ten seasons. In the Yorkshire Evening Post , Little John and Will Watch called the county’s 22 nd Championship ‘the most remarkable of them all when the full account is taken’. The openers had never made a century stand. The batsmen only made six centuries. In a season of much rain and low scoring, Yorkshire were unbeaten. Someone always made a match-saving, or match-winning, innings. Indeed, they wondered in print if Yorkshire might not have been champions if they had made more runs, as they then might have enforced the follow-on, and the unrested bowlers might not have done as well. An editorial in the Yorkshire Post praised ‘the spirit of the team so perfectly typified in the captain A.B.Sellers’. The Times likewise called it a triumph for Sellers, ‘who must surely rank among their greatest’: ‘On and off the field he was a leader, wise and friendly, to a side who responded to a fine example.’ In the county’s final Championship averages Sellers was third to Hutton and Barber, by number of runs and average. A ten-wicket defeat by Hampshire at Bournemouth – Sellers top scored in each innings – hardly mattered. Lastly, rain at Trent Bridge prevented a likely innings defeat of Nottinghamshire, after Sellers again top scored. When Yorkshire had to follow on at Scarborough to draw with the MCC, Sellers top scored again. Newspapers saw it as the end of the great 1930s side. A fortnight earlier, Leyland had said he would retire. Sellers and his deputy Yardley faced a new task; of bringing on several inexperienced players, without many