Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

A family affair 33 the county the following year and now, in his 45th year, he found himself turning out for Lincolnshire. In the first innings Geeson took four for 26 as Yorkshire were dismissed for just 80 but Ted Leyland kept his side in the game. He bowled Lincolnshire opener the Rev CG Ward with 12 on the board and then went on to claim another four wickets to finish with five for 36, off 22 overs, and leave the visitors with only a seven run lead on first innings. Unfortunately for Yorkshire they fared even worse in their second innings, bowled for only 65, but Leyland, though only collecting another eight runs, came so close to bowling his side to an unlikely victory. Four times he rattled the stumps of the Lincolnshire batsmen, and then had Shaw caught by Grimshaw, to take five of the first seven wickets to fall with only 20 scored. Brooke and Geeson then added 31 crucial runs for the eighth wicket and though a Leyland catch, off Fred Smith, eventually accounted for Brooke the visitors edged home by two wickets. It was a tremendous start for the Harrogate man and he went on to take three for 43 and four for 72 in the drawn match with Northumberland, at Newcastle, and against Staffordshire, at Stoke, he took six for 34 and four for 29 - that included clean bowling the legendary England bowler Sydney Barnes for 20 in the first innings. That success over Barnes at the beginning of August, while welcome, was scarce revenge for events at Wakefield four weeks earlier when he was lbw to the great man, without scoring, on a day when Barnes took all ten Yorkshire wickets for just 26 runs in 16.4 overs. There was another well documented meeting with Barnes that involved a very young Maurice - but more of that later. Ted collected another ten wicket haul in the return with Lincolnshire at Skegness and, this time, with the help of 31 not out with the bat, he finished on the winning side. His final game in an all too brief ten match career with Yorkshire Seconds was an abandoned game with Northumberland, at Redcar. But, before rain ended the proceedings there he managed to record yet another five wicket feat to take his Yorkshire tally to 51. His highest score for Yorkshire was 35 against Surrey, at Rotherham on July 8 and 9, and among the many victims of his bowling