Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

About the author Mike Popplewell , father of three sons by two marriages, is a lifelong sports fan with a family history of supporting Tottenham Hotspur FC that goes back 140 years. He was born in Portsmouth at the end of the Second World War but brought up in Ilford, Essex, where, in 1955, he began watching an Essex team boasting the likes of Trevor Bailey, Doug Insole, Brian ‘Tonker’ Taylor and the inspiring fielding of Michael Bear. A much varied working life took in jobs as a clerk, an office manager, and a psychiatric nurse before embarking on a freelance writing career in 1983 with regular contributions to The Football Monthly , The Cricketer (briefly), the Yorkshire Evening Post and Bradford’s Telegraph & Argus , as well as sport, religious and historical features in other publications. He was a diehard Essex CCC fan for much of his life only to discover ten tears ago, having moved to Gomersal, West Yorkshire 25 years ago, that his great-great-great grandparents had actually left nearby Heckmondwike for London in 1818 - and that a distant ancestor, Alfred Firth, had, in 1862, played one first class game for Yorkshire. His sporting allegiances are now divided!