Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

Chapter ten Against the rest NS ‘Mandy’ Mitchell-Innes had the distinction of being the oldest surviving English Test cricketer when he died in 2006 and the only man then living to have appeared in a Test for England alongside Maurice Leyland, at Trent Bridge against South Africa in 1935. “I was still a very young man at Oxford and Maurice was a very well established player,” he recalled. “He was a very kind, very helpful and a delightful person. He was a grand person to have on your side in a match ….,” he hesitated, chuckled, and then added, “but a bit of a problem if he was against you!” Mitchell-Innes, born in India in 1914, where his father was in business, had qualified for Somerset after his family had settled there on returning to England and he made his first class debut under the captaincy of JC ‘Farmer’ White as a 16-year-old in 1931. White, a great character, could, according to Mitchell- Innes, go three weeks at harvest time without touching a ball and then turn up and bowl you a maiden with his first over. He was an earlier England contemporary of Maurice, with the pair having toured Australia together in 1928-29 and South Africa in 1930- 31, and the photographs taken by Maurice in South Africa clearly endorse the ‘great character’ epithet. In three Tests in the West Indies in 1934-35 he had a total of just 36 runs in the series and a batting average of six. With Essex paceman Ken Farnes fit again, having missed the two previous Tests, the selectors opted for an extra bowler for the fourth and final Test and Maurice was left out. He had a difficult start to the 1935 season with Yorkshire. To start with, the climatic contrast between Kingston upon Hull and Kingston, Jamaica could not have been greater. Having left behind the Caribbean Maurice found himself back in his native Yorkshire in weather more suited to skiing. Matches were played in icy winds throughout May with spectators, those who braved the Arctic conditions, wrapped in scarves and overcoats. In fact, one Championship game, against Derbyshire at Chesterfield, ended in a snowstorm. It is perhaps no coincidence that Maurice developed a back problem early in 109