Maurice Leyland - Early Years and Success For Yorkshire

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.

Read more about this topic:  Maurice Leyland

Famous quotes containing the words early, years and/or success:

    There is a relationship between cartooning and people like MirĂ³ and Picasso which may not be understood by the cartoonist, but it definitely is related even in the early Disney.
    Roy Lichtenstein (b. 1923)

    As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern day.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The white man regards the universe as a gigantic machine hurtling through time and space to its final destruction: individuals in it are but tiny organisms with private lives that lead to private deaths: personal power, success and fame are the absolute measures of values, the things to live for. This outlook on life divides the universe into a host of individual little entities which cannot help being in constant conflict thereby hastening the approach of the hour of their final destruction.
    Policy statement, 1944, of the Youth League of the African National Congress. pt. 2, ch. 4, Fatima Meer, Higher than Hope (1988)