Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

A family affair 45 carried a large turnip of a watch, by which his very life itself was regulated, for he had no regard for pavilion clocks, umpires, players or administrators’ interpretations of time. If his son, playing for England, exceeded the century or played a vital innings in difficult conditions, the old man’s eyes glinted and reflected the measure of his pride, as he permitted himself the verbal extravagance of ‘t’laad must a’plaayed weill’. Deep down inside him, however, he was greatly moved and very proud, but nothing short of a great innings in a Roses match could possibly bring these emotions to the surface. Deakins’ punch line was the story of the day Maurice made 153 not out, in a lunchtime Yorkshire score of 199 for five, in a crucial match at Bournemouth against Hampshire. On hearing the news Ted simply remarked: “Wot ‘appened t’t’others?” Greaves remarked that ‘all his life he scorned adjectives and yet he remained the most expressive of men’. Maurice’s birthplace in Harrogate, in 2016 beside a petrol station