Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

a carrot for the bowlers, weren’t they? Fat chance! If the Australian skipper was able to persuade himself that another wicket was just around the corner the reality of the situation did not take too long to register. Maurice brought up his 50, out of 85, in 95 minutes, Hutton’s arrived in 140 minutes with the score at 117, the century stand came up in 105 minutes and in the first hour after lunch 68 runs had been added. As Bradman juggled with his depleted attack it became increasingly obvious that his two main spinners were going to have to bear the brunt of whatever the English batsmen were going to throw at them. Waite did find the edge of Maurice’s bat once - the ball going wide of the leg stump - but, undeterred, he carried on his innings in his own determined way and at the same time took great pleasure in watching his youthful partner move toward his second century of the series. It finally came with the score on 206, his second 50 arriving in 70 minutes. The crowd, now around 20,000, rose to its feet to salute a three and a half hour innings in which, since the early slips, he had middled the ball with absolute command. Stan McCabe and Waite returned to the attack with the new ball but there was nothing in the wicket for any of the bowlers and before long the crowd were cheering another record. After 180 minutes together the Yorkshire pair eclipsed Sutcliffe and Hammond’s 188-run second wicket partnership against Australia at Sydney in 1932-33 and ten minutes later they took their stand past the 200 mark. Maurice then went to his own century to crown a brilliant return to Test cricket but it was never easy and the crowd’s sense of boredom certainly got to the batsmen. At one point Hutton came down the wicket to Maurice and, looking at the empty outfield beyond the deeply placed mid-off and mid-on, asked, “Shall I try to hit him over the top?” “No,” replied Maurice. “We’ve a long way to go yet before we can start hitting them where we want.” Maurice, taking his own advice, spent a little longer than usual in the 90s but the three figures never really looked in doubt and when the chance came he crashed a ball from Fleetwood-Smith to the long off boundary for his tenth four of the innings and brought up his fifth century of the season. Soon after there was a burst of rain heavy enough to send the players rushing to the The match 19