Maurice Leyland - Yorkshire Record Breaker

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.