Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

26 urgent errand by his mother. It was one o’clock, lunch was in half an hour, but the errand couldn’t wait and he was the only one available to run it. Without any further delay he set off, running as fast as his legs would take him, but it was to no avail. At ten minutes past one Uncle Maurice perished by his own hand, or perhaps that should be feet? Nearly half a century later Hutton said: “Australians always brought the best out in Maurice and …. he was as good as he had ever been. From the other end of the wicket his bat seemed to be as broad as his shoulders.” But it wasn’t his bat that let him down. Hutton, facing O’Reilly, hit a firm drive and set off for a single. Lindsay Hassett, at deep mid-off made a good effort to stop it but only succeeded in getting his fingertips to the ball and it rolled away from him. At this point there is some dispute as to exactly what happened. Kilburn suggested that Hutton had already turned for a second run and Maurice felt it was too late to send him back but most other sources felt it was Maurice who misjudged, badly as it happened, the possibility of a second run. Hassett recovered quickly and threw the ball in toward the unguarded stumps at the bowler’s end. Just for a second or two it looked as if Maurice might escape as the throw went wide of the stumps but Bradman, swooping in from mid-on, grabbed the ball as it bounced and in two strides broke the wicket with the ball in his hand. The appeal went up, more relief and desperation than jubilation, and umpire Walden walked into cricket history with a raised finger. Neither player publicly apportioned any blame for the incident, with the score on 411 for two, and a record 382 run second wicket partnership established, that would have been churlish, but in later years Maurice was reported to have passed an odd wry comment appearing to point the finger at his young partner. Incidentally, Edrich never did say whether he felt any better for seeing ‘Last man 187’ on the scoreboard!. When Geoff returned home, soon after, he found that he had missed it all. For a few illogical minutes he blamed himself, after all nothing had gone wrong when he’d been listening. There you are, if only Maurice, and the millions listening and watching, had realised that the run out wasn’t the fault of Hutton or Leyland. Anyway, the partnership was finished and a nation The match