Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

Enter Sir William 75 county players to appear at Hovingham, uniquely, Sir Marcus fondly remembered him coming back, long after he had finished playing, just to umpire games. Sir William’s records recall one specific instance of this in July 1958 when Jim Swanton’s touring side, the Arabs, were in opposition to the Hovingham eleven and former Middlesex leg-spinner RVC Robins was bowling for the visitors. Robins, becoming increasingly frustrated at having a number of appeals for lbw turned down by Maurice, eventually turned to him and shouted ‘What have I got to do?’ Ignoring the rhetorical exclamation, Maurice, in his own inimitable style, paused for a moment and then, never changing his expression for a second, quietly replied, “Get him to play back, you might have a chance.” At this point in Maurice’s life the Parkinson’s disease that would so severely incapacitate him in his final years was clearly in evidence. But, he was determined to carry on and he’d stand throughout these games with his tremulous hand stuck firmly in the pocket of his umpire’s coat to hide the effects of the disease. Maurice spent many happy hours at Hovingham but it could have all been so different had fate not been smiling on William Worsley during his wartime service. His appointment as captain of Yorkshire in 1928 is all the more remarkable for the fact that it was a miracle he even survived the Great War. As an officer in the Green Howards he was posted to France early in the conflict, shot in the head, and left for dead by his unit. Fortunately, he was still alive when the German troops came on the scene and he was nursed back to health as a prisoner in Germany. He was removed to Holland by the Germans in 1915 and there he was housed with a Dutch family throughout the remainder of the conflict. The family in question, incidentally, were later invited to visit Hovingham as William’s guest. No one liked to hit the ball quite so hard, or so early, in an innings asWilliam, a fact remarked upon in the 1929 edition of Wisden , but even allowing for his happy, and successful, times at Hovingham the call to the county captaincy must have come as a surprise. There was an Old Etonian link between the Worsley family and Yorkshire President Lord Hawke whose playing association with Hovingham went back to a time before acceding to the title of