Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

167 In Memoriam Hilarem War. It was my privilege to know his family well, and to know them was to appreciate them to the full, and to get perhaps a better understanding than ever before of real Yorkshire folk. I enjoyed many happy meals at their table - understood the game infinitely the better for knowing Ted and Maurice - and shall always remember with affection those, the greatest and happiest days at Edgbaston when I had the privilege of their company. This was the personal side, but on the County and National side, he was equally respected and regarded, and fortunate was the man who claimed friendship with Maurice. Much has been written about his great innings’ both for Yorkshire and England, and even more about his great love of the game, and the manner in which he played it. Cricket and all who follow it, are so much the poorer on his passing, but he has left us the greatest and happiest of memories, and we must rest content. I am pleased to have known him and his family - to have seen and appreciated his cricket - and most of all to have talked on the quiet days, when the cheering had died down, and he was just a boy with a life-long love of the game and a wonderful knowledge of it. Yours ever, Leslie. Other personal messages included one from former team-mate Ellis Robinson: “He was a wonderful man, a great colleague and a very good friend. Please convey my deepest and sincerest condolences on the passing of such a good man’, and from Kent groundsman Wilf Merry who said: ‘I was so sad to learn of Maurice’s passing and having some nice years with the family I wish to express my regrets.’ From the terraces came ‘We have lost one of nature’s gentlemen and a true friend,’ from Colin Harrison of Harrogate: ‘In the late 1920s Maurice was a great hero of mine, though a Sussex man by birth and Kent by adoption, and will rank as one of the finest allrounders of all time. He will never be forgotten.’ Sydney Orr of Maidstone: ‘In his early days we were both members of the HarrogateClub. Hewill always rank as one of the greatest England and Yorkshire cricketers and as a man of great character.’ Harold Atkinson, of Harrogate, wrote: “Even in the tragedy of his latter days in hospital his sense of humour was still there” And Stanley