Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

Field of dreams 121 took two and half hours over his 67 and, untypically, the knock included only two fours. When it came for Sir Pelham Warner’s side to bat Maurice rounded off a thoroughly rewarding day with figures of five for 30 and named Compton and Allen among his victims. ‘Charity’ games were sometimes a sore point with Maurice, however, as he was strongly opposed to seeing funds raised being eaten into by the professionals ‘expenses’ claims. During the summer of 1942 he was actually given permission to be released fromArmy duties to play in one such game but he refused to turn out. Instead he asked if, since he had already been given time off, he could go and play in another game in Kent in which he knew no expenses of any kind would be allowed. Going back to Lord’s, that ground also figures in the last war- time game worth a mention, on July 29, 1944, and Maurice was again in Army colours for the regular game against the RAF. The cricket itself was interesting but not spectacular. The Army made 211 for eight and the RAF batted out for a draw on 129 for nine, with Maurice taking two wickets for one run in the final over, but the talking point was the scare during the first innings of the match when a flying bomb appeared overhead. Everyone in the ground, who could, dived flat out as the bomb looked set to hit the Nursery but in the end it was Regents Park that eventually bore the brunt of the explosion. There were other games, usually used as fund-raisers, but Maurice was not the only one in the Leyland household doing their bit for the war effort. Even his wife Connie came to the fore. Though she was an ardent supporter of her husband, and a regular watcher before the war, Connie, bedevilled by the highly conspicuous skin disorder called exfoliative dermatitis, spent most of her later years away from the public gaze. However, she became a volunteer worker in charge of the YMCA at Belvedere, Harrogate. Family scrapbooks show her with the mayor at an Easter ‘bring and buy’, serving tea to members of the armed forces using the YMCA canteen and, alongside the Princess Royal, Princess Mary, the sister of King George VI, who made an informal visit to the YMCA. Later, on a visit by the Princess to Leeds, Connie was one of 110 Yorkshire volunteers presented