Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

43 A family affair catches and in the last game, against York St Michael, hammered 104 not out and had a hat-trick in an eight for 23 bowling stint. In between there was his superb personal best nine for 23, against the Officers Disposal Unit, Ripon. Ted played one game for Harrogate, with Maurice, in 1919 but it was 1921 before he returned to his home town club as a professional at the age of 44. His final spell as a player lasted three years and in that time he managed to twice take more than 80 wickets in a season including bowling returns of eight for 10 versus Elland, and eight for 19 against the MCC. In 1922, his penultimate season, he took 70 wickets at 7.3 in Yorkshire Council matches to take the Council bowling prize, 89 wickets in all matches, and in his total of nine seasons as a Harrogate CC player he took 348 wickets at 12.49. During his last years at Harrogate Ted had fewer and fewer opportunities to play alongside Maurice, who had moved on to bigger and better things with Yorkshire, but they were to see plenty of each other around Headingley between 1924 and 1926 as he was employed as the groundsman there. One experience at this time provided Ted with an anecdote he was to repeat many times over. In the progress of one game in which Maurice was playing Ted was stood at the gate at Headingley, talking to the commissionaire, when a man approached them. The official asked the man for his ticket and he replied, “I haven’t got one, I’m Maurice Leyland’s father”. “That’s funny,” chimed in Ted, with a grin, “I always thought I was!” After three years at Headingley there was another family upheaval as Ted, Mercy and the 20-year-old Cora moved to Birmingham to live in a cottage on the Edgbaston cricket ground where Ted had taken up the position as Warwickshire County Cricket Club groundsman. As Maurice’s fame grew so did that of his dad - and the horses he used to pull the heavy roller. The first horse Ted worked with at Edgbaston was a former gun-pulling Army mare by the name of Dolly and she was immortalised by Birmingham Evening Mail artist Norman Edwards who featured Ted astride her in one of his cricketing cartoons. Dolly was replaced by Chloe who was also the subject of the occasional press report. According to one cutting, in Mercy’s