Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

143 session you’d only finish up batting for about eight of them. But, with Maurice, he’d let you have your full time and then talk to you after. When Brian Close reported for the start of the 1951 season he was fresh off the boat from New Zealand where he had just become England’s youngest ever Test player but he immediately warmed to Maurice’s style of coaching. “He was a lovely man and, as far as I’m concerned, the ideal coach,” he insisted: He would watch you for a while and then perhaps say quietly, ‘Have you thought about doing things this way…’ He was always ready to let you use your natural ability and then modify it to get the best out of you. Despite Close’s admiration for Maurice, his new coach was not above having a little joke at Close’s expense, as Peter Kippax recalled. I was a leg break bowler and because of that I got invited to stay on and work with the seniors. Brian, being a left-hander, was usually with Maurice. Now Brian always claimed he could read a leg break bowler and easily pick the googly - but he couldn’t. I’d be bowling and Maurice, who stood behind him, at the back of the net, used to just give me a signal to slip in the ‘wrong ‘un’. I reckon I beat Brian with it every time and, when I looked up, I could see Maurice’s shoulders going up and down as he chuckled to himself. Kippax, still turning out for Harrogate’s second or third teams aged 61, played four times for Yorkshire in 1961 to 1962, but remembered being in awe of his coaches at that time: To be honest Arthur frightened me even though I knew it was just his way of having a joke sometimes. But Maurice, though economical with words, had a way of reassuring and encouraging you with just a smile or a nod. It was advice more than coaching with Maurice. Many happy returns