Lives in Cricket No 47 - Brian Sellers

97 Last seasons 1946-48 While standing back to Alex Coxon, the Yorkshire skipper suddenly rose from his rather majestic and somewhat uncomfortable crouch, raised one imperious gloved hand as Alex was about to bowl, walked up to Ray and asked him if he had ever scored a hundred. On being told no, the great man announced to the world in general that he would never have a better bloody chance and then allowed play to continue. Smith ended on 86 not out. To return to that 1948 defeat at Bristol after a declaration, as so often the turning point was a missed catch, by Sellers ‘of all people’ the Bristol Evening World reported. When Gloucestershire were 120 for four in their first innings and needed another 43 to save the follow-on, Sellers missed Tom Graveney at mid-wicket; ‘a fairly easy chance’. By then Sellers was 41 and had retired the autumn before. While standing in for Yardley in 1948 he still batted usefully; he top scored with 91 as Yorkshire beat the clear leaders and later champions Glamorgan on first innings at Hull; and at Worcester added 106 for the last wicket with Don Brennan. Sellers averaged 34 in the Championship, as if fewer matches and more rest did him good, although the season did favour batsmen. In a hefty 1950 history of Yorkshire in the last 25 years, Kilburn summed up Sellers. He was lucky in taking over a good side; of course he was not always right: Sometimes the players thought he was carrying determination beyond the point of reason, sometimes his discipline was considered harsh and sometimes he was less than tactful, but his mistakes were those of a man with the strongest sense of duty conscious of carrying a responsibility beyond personal considerations. He neither courted favour nor feared unpopularity and he never shirked a task however distasteful which he regarded as part of the duty of his office. What that meant for a player emerging after the war, Johnny Wardle spoke of in his memoir. At the cold Headingley nets in April 1947, several players were standing around in overcoats. ‘Suddenly there burst forth a roar as from a loud hailer on the bridge of a tramp steamer in a gale.’ Sellers suggested the players had better ways to keep warm. ‘Johnny,’ Wardle thought to himself, ‘if he blasts the big boys like that, what is he going to do to the infants department? And that means you.’ Wardle revealed that the upturn from mid-July 1947 came after Sellers cleared the Trent Bridge dressing room of everyone except the players and tore into them: ‘You have got to concentrate on every single ball all the match and have enough concentration left to keep an eye on me into the bargain,’ Sellers said. It’s worth listing the ten that had to take the telling-off: in batting order, Hutton, Willie Watson, Yardley, Gerald Smithson, Alec Coxon, Frank Smailes, Wardle, Brennan, Bowes and Booth; in other words, all past, present or future England players except Booth. Sellers was, as Wardle said, ‘no respecter of persons’. Wardle told also how at Harrogate in June 1948, when wet ground delayed play, Sellers marched Wardle around the ground (‘Brian never strolls’) while giving him ‘the dressing down of my life’. The bell rang for play to