- Maurice Leyland
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Maurice Leyland Personal information Full name Maurice Leyland Born 20 July 1900
Harrogate, Yorkshire, EnglandDied 1 January 1967 (aged 66)
Scotton, Harrogate, Yorkshire, EnglandBatting style Left-hand bat Bowling style Slow left-arm orthodox International information National side English Career statistics Competition Tests First-class Matches 41 686 Runs scored 2,764 33,660 Batting average 46.06 40.50 100s/50s 9/10 80/154 Top score 187 263 Balls bowled 1103 28971 Wickets 6 466 Bowling average 97.50 29.31 5 wickets in innings - 11 10 wickets in match - 1 Best bowling 3/91 8/63 Catches/stumpings 13/- 246/- Source: [1], Maurice Leyland (20 July 1900 – 1 January 1967), christened 'Morris Leyland', was an English cricketer who played 41 Test matches between 1928 and 1938 and proved himself one of the best left-handers of his generation.
He made 2,764 runs for England at 46.06 with 9 hundreds and 10 fifties, with a highest score of 187. Seven of those nine hundreds came against Australia, against whom he scored 1,705 runs at an average of 56.84. He also took 6 wickets with a best of 3 for 91. In 686 first-class games overall he compiled 33,660 runs at 40.50 with a highest score of 263 in 1936 against Essex at Hull. He made 80 centuries and 154 fifties. 26,191 of them were for Yorkshire County Cricket Club, for whom his average was 41.05. He took 466 first-class wickets at an average of 29.31 with a best of 8 for 63. He was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1929 but is remembered just as much for his dry wit as the remorseless weight of his figures.
"Nervous? Of course I'm nervous. There you are, out in t' middle an' there's 30,000 people all knowin' better what to do than you do." He was frank about the physical courage required to face fast bowlers in the days before helmets. "Nobody likes 'em, but some of us don't let on."
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Early years and success for Yorkshire
Leyland was born in New Park, Harrogate, Yorkshire, England. He came from a cricketing family. His father Ted was a well-respected club cricketer in the tough northern leagues and had become a noted groundsman. Maurice first played for Moorside C.C. in Lancashire at the age of 12, where his father was both the groundsman and playing professional and at 14 he played in hard school of Lancashire League cricket. After the end of the Great War he left the Army and dedicated himself to professional cricket. From 1918 to 1920 he was engaged as the professional at Harrogate C.C. at St. George's Road, he played in Yorkshire Council matches and made his debut for the Yorkshire 2nd XI.
His county debut came against Essex at Southend in 1920, before he had ever spectated at a first-class game. He soon became a fixture and remained so until the outbreak of the Second World War. He reappeared after the end of hostilities, playing his last match for Yorkshire against the MCC in the Scarborough Festival of 1946 and in a handful of other games in the following two years for miscellaneous representative sides. He scored 62 centuries for Yorkshire.
Leyland won his coveted county cap in 1922 and passed 1,000 runs in a season for the first time in the following year. He went on to complete his thousand runs in every season from then until the outbreak of war, seventeen consecutive seasons in all. He scored 2,000 runs in a season three times. In 1932 he scored 1,013 runs in August alone. In partnership with the great Herbert Sutcliffe he once smashed 102 off six overs shared by Ken Farnes, Nichols and O'Connor at Scarborough against Essex. His highest aggregate for Yorkshire was 2,196 in 1933, when he scored 2,317 in all first-class games at an average of 50.36.
Ten years at the top of Test cricket
Leyland's Test career batting graph. The red bars indicate the runs that he scored in an innings, and the blue line indicates the batting average in his last 10 innings. The blue dots indicate innings in which he finished not out.
Leyland began his Test career with a duck against the West Indies at the Oval in 1928, a game England won by an innings. He was picked for Percy Chapman's 1928-29 Ashes tour of Australia but had to wait until the 5th Test of the series at Melbourne to play. He wasted no time in establishing himself, scoring a hundred (137) and an unbeaten 53, and was an automatic selection from then on for a decade. He was a free-scoring player by inclination but proved his determination time after time by rescuing England after a poor start. His stroke play was based on an immaculate defence and implacable will. Bowlers had to labour hard to take his wicket. Never was this better displayed than at Brisbane in 1936-37, when Leyland rescued England from a parlous 20 for 3 to post 126 against the likes of Bill O'Reilly and set up a final crushing victory by 322 runs. He did not always best the fiery Australian leggie however. He once described a typically hostile O'Reilly over thus: "First he bowled me an off-break, then he bowled me a leg-break; then his googly, then a bumper, then one that went with his arm . . . ." "But that's only five, Maurice. What about the last one?" "Oh, that," said Maurice with a smile, "That was a straight 'un and it bowled me."
He lost his place in the Test team at the start of 1938 as a new generation, headed by Len Hutton, Denis Compton and Bill Edrich were given their chance. He returned for the Oval match where his magnificent 187 will always be overshadowed by Hutton's record innings of 364. Leyland added 382 for the second wicket with Hutton, England scored 903 for seven declared and beat Australia by an innings and 579. At the time it was the record partnership for any wicket by an England pair.
Leyland had consoled Hutton when the youngster was run out for a duck in his debut game with "Never mind, lad, you've started at bottom." When Hutton's mammoth vigil ended at last Leyland led the race to the bar and demanded two bottles of champagne. "Why two bottles, Maurice?" "One for thee, Len, and one for me."
Yorkshire record breaker
He took the record for Yorkshire's second wicket in partnership with Wilf Barber when the pair thrashed Middlesex for 346 in four and a half hours at Sheffield in 1932. He held, with Herbert Sutcliffe the record for Yorkshire's third wicket, 323 against Glamorgan at Huddersfield in 1928 and, with Emmott Robinson, the record for Yorkshire's sixth wicket, 276 against the luckless Welshmen at Swansea in 1926.
He hit hundreds against every first-class county except - oddly - Somerset, so often Yorkshire's whipping boys between the wars. His highest score was 263 against Essex at Hull in 1936 and his highest aggregate for Yorkshire was 2,196 in 1933, when he also reached his highest first-class aggregate, 2,317, average 50.36.
His slow left arm orthodox spin would have received more exposure at any other county but first Wilfred Rhodes and Roy Kilner and then the immaculate Hedley Verity dominated the White Rose spin attack. According to pace bowler Bill Bowes, Maurice claimed that he invented the 'chinaman' which spins into, instead of away from, the right-hander. Usually called upon only to break a stand which Rhodes or Verity had for once been unable to break, Leyland frequently mixed up wrist spun 'wrong uns' to tempt or deceive the established batsman to destruction. "Put on Maurice to bowl some of those Chinese things." Roy Kilner explained, "It's foreign stuff and you can't call it anything else."
Leyland was gifted in every facet of the game, an all round fielder who was particularly adept in the deep during an era when ground fielding was less practised than it is today. He was fast over the ground, had good hands and a fast, flat throw.
Coaching
He was not lost to Yorkshire when his playing days were done. His experience at least did not go to waste as Yorkshire appointed him their head coach from 1951 until 1963 when mounting ill health forced his retirement. A squat, solid figure in later life, his flat cap slightly askew, he helped mould the young generation of Fred Trueman, Brian Close and Ray Illingworth who would restore Yorkshire's domination of county cricket in the 1960s.
Anecdotes about him abound to this day in cricketing circles. Perhaps the most famous Leyland story recalls a match in which, yet again, Leyland found himself holding the fort as wickets fell about him. Fifteen minutes before the close England, with seven wickets down, were still 300 behind, and the ninth man in, seemingly oblivious of the desperate situation, hit his first ball into the covers and began to scamper an unwise single. Leyland waved his eager partner back with the words "Wait your hurry, Mr. Robins. We shan't get 'em all tonight."
Death
Leyland died in Scotton, Harrogate, Yorkshire on the first day of 1967, aged 66.
References
Categories:- 1900 births
- 1967 deaths
- English cricketers
- England Test cricketers
- English cricketers of 1919 to 1945
- Yorkshire cricketers
- Wisden Cricketers of the Year
- People from Harrogate
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