Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

157 Championship success since the end of the First World War and they proceeded to take the title in 1967 and 1968. Although his Harrogate friends, Peter Chadwick and Joe and Tony Clarkson, visited when they could Maurice did not see too many people outside the Russell family in those final months. Bryan Stott did visit once but, as he explained: “I was heartbroken when I saw him. It may have been selfish of me but I couldn’t face seeing him like that and I didn’t go again.” Chadwick, who had known him a little longer of course, was left with a warmer memory of those last days despite the obvious upset at witnessing his decline. He recalled: I used to go up to the hospital to see Maurice with Joe Clarkson, in the afternoon usually. Sometimes, on a warm day we would go and sit outside with him on a bench but usually he wasn’t well enough to get out of bed. I don’t know who went in the evening but we were always on our own, no one else ever turned up while we were there. It was just before Christmas when we saw him last. He certainly recognised us and, though he found it almost impossible to communicate with us, there was that sparkle in his eye that you instantly recognised from old. He always had that. He’d sometimes be having a go at you The Maurice Leyland gates at Harrogate Cricket Club, 2016; detail on brickwork, page 155