Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

119 Field of dreams Yorkshire, but he was not involved in combat. He managed to get in the odd game of cricket and though mostly exhibition games he did have a short spell in the Bradford League in 1942 with one of his father’s old clubs, Undercliffe, where one of his team-mates was Kippax-born batsman Dennis Brookes. Brookes was already an established opening batsman with Northamptonshire and he particularly remembered Maurice at that time as there was talk of Brookes going home to play full time. “I don’t know whether it was an official approach or not but Maurice did ask me if I would consider playing for Yorkshire,” recalled Brookes, “But, as it happened, I had settled down in Northampton and it would have been too much to uproot my family.” Northamptonshire certainly were the beneficiaries of that decision for the player went on to 492 games for the county, between 1934 and 1959, and a career total of nearly 31,000 runs. Among Maurice’s scrapbooks and photos there was one particular team line-up that had no caption and took a while to identify but, as it transpired, it was a war-time Undercliffe side. Alongside Maurice were fellow county men Sandy Jacques, Arthur Wood, Frank Dennis and a young Vic Wilson - not to mention his father stood at the back with other former players. If ever any proof were needed as to the strength of league cricket in war-time a glance at that line-up should do it. That summer he played in six Bradford League games clocking up a top score of 51 and best bowling returns of six for 14, on his debut, and a 5-33 stint against Saltaire that included a hat- trick. Incidentally the ball with which he took that hat-trick was later mounted and inscribed and Maurice kept it on permanent display at home alongside the one with which he completed a hat-trick for Yorkshire against Surrey, at Bramall Lane in 1935. In the 1942 Priestley Cup competition a knock of 70 helped his side make progress in round two but even a five for 52 return in the semi-final failed to secure a final place. Throughout the war Maurice continued to fit the occasional morale-boosting cricketing exercise in among his general service duties. In June 1940 he captained his own eleven against Captain Herbert Sutcliffe’s eleven in a game for the Red Cross and in August appeared for a Yorkshire eleven against the Bradford