Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

kind and generous woman - and of striking appearance! Her lifestyle prompted a few raised eyebrows in fact. She was a very determined young lady who, in many ways typified the emancipated woman of the 1930s, and would perhaps have been even more at home in the 21st century. She was very masculine in appearance and one day at Edgbaston, while working on the ground dressed in trousers, shirt, waistcoat - and smoking her pipe, she was approached by a man asking to see Miss Leyland. “Well, who do you think I am?” she asked indignantly. As a youngster David Potter met Cora a few times and well remembered her extrovert ways. “She really was a character,” he said. “She normally drove around in a sporting red MG but one day she came to visit us at our house on Runcorn Road .... on a horse!!!! She just rode up to the front gate, got off, and tied the horse up on our gatepost.” Cora never married and, bravely for the times, openly enjoyed the long term companionship of a female friend, Helen, with whom she lived until the day she died, and their relationship appeared to be completely acceptable within the family. Like the rest of the family, during times of Maurice’s greatest popularity, Cora was also under the spotlight and commanded the odd news paragraph herself - though usually in connection with the cricketing exploits of her youth. Maurice may never have had children of his own but he was always a committed family man and maintained contact with many of his extended family members throughout his life. Mum’s the word 54 Maurice’s mother Mercy ‘admiring the roses’