Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

139 presentation night, and Maurice was doing the presenting. He reminded the Uppermill members of his early association with the area and went on to recommend cricket as a career for any young person with the necessary ability. “I’ve been on eleven tours,” he told the audience, “and I enjoyed every one of them. If they asked me to go again I would swim it.” A Saturday night drive from Harrogate to the outskirts of Oldham, in late November, for a night at the Uppermill Mechanics Institute, is, admittedly, not everyone’s idea of a good time but Maurice loved these occasions. If he was around cricket people he was in his element and, though a naturally quiet man, he enjoyed playing to the crowd and if he could raise a laugh he was happy. However, privately, the winter of 1948-49 was a difficult for Maurice and his family. His father suffered a slight stroke in the November and, when looking on the road to recovery, then collapsed and died the following February. Connie was finding her skin condition increasingly debilitating and, due to both her appearance and the physical effects of the illness, she was to share less and less in Maurice’s public life. As well as being housebound at times she also suffered the frustrations of being limited in what she could do around the house by way of work or recreation - when her hands were affected she was unable even to do the embroidery she so loved doing. The house at College Road had always been a hive of activity but Connie’s father had died just before the war, her brother Gordon married in 1944 and left the family home, and, soon after the war, her mother died as well. That left Connie and Maurice with the house to themselves and though happy with the peace and quiet that this brought them it was a life, suddenly, far removed from the pre-war sociability and celebrity that, while never craved, they enjoyed so much. While family life had always been very important to them it now became the focal point. Maurice went out to work during the week and played his cricket for Harrogate on a Saturday but there was also time for Connie’s family, who all lived locally, and, like any dutiful son, he made regular visits to his widowed mother as her health began to fail. Many happy returns