Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

The match 31 not even making the short-list. Further argument saw the exclusion of all but Woolley, Hendren, Hammond, Leyland, Paynter and Hutton with Hammond immediately stepping out from that list. Woolley was next to go and though the writer never could make a final decision on the relative merits of Hutton over Hendren, or vice versa, Maurice duly took his place. “I should always prefer Leyland to Paynter,” wrote Prittie: Both are left-handers, both Northerners and both real fighters who have rescued England in times of trouble. The differences in their records are small. Paynter’s successes have been greater when they occurred; Leyland’s have been more frequent. I am slightly, and no doubt wrongly prejudiced against Paynter by some of the praise that has been lavished on him. Unwittingly, critics have given the impression that he was ‘up against it’, a plucky little fighter commanding admiration that was flavoured with a large pinch of sympathy. Leyland never enlists sympathy, and I believe that this is because there is a greater degree of mastery in his batting and in the man himself. When Leyland is batting the struggle is no longer uphill save in a purely statistical sense. He has the power of taking the initiative from any living bowlers, and it is they who are deserving of sympathy when the battle is on. Leyland, in fact, is worth his place even when in competition with Hutton and Hendren. He may have had little of Woolley’s glamour, but his grit and obstinacy give him, at least over the 1919-1939 period, a direct advantage. He may not have been one of my first choices but he becomes, on selection, the side’s most dependable batsman. Incidentally, if he ever had any doubt about his selection of Maurice in that side, or doubted his judgement of the man, he was to be reassured by one last defiant gesture, which he reported for the Manchester Guardian , in the first post-war season - but that’s another story.