Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

8 Chapter One Finding a small enough bat The village of Broughton Astley, six miles from Hinckley in Leicestershire, boasts a population of some 10,000. It has grown apace in recent years and few have a better appreciation of its expansion than former England cricket captain M.J.K. Smith, for whom it has been a home in both childhood and retirement. Michael John Knight Smith, the oldest of three children of Maurice and Muriel Smith, was born in a Leicester nursing home on 30 June 1933 and brought home to Broughton Astley. He retains boyhood memories of living in rural surroundings that have now been subsumed by urban spread replete with a ring road. Making his way to the pub which had been his father’s favoured local, he highlights the changes to the village, pointing out a butcher’s shop that had once been the blacksmith’s. ‘My grandfather was the village blacksmith,’ he enjoys relating; but it was not the eponymous grandfather Smith whose forge has been replaced by the fresh meat counter but that of his mother’s father, Tom Bird. The business had passed out of the family by the An early picture of Bill Bryan, the Broughton Astley blacksmith, whom Mike used to watch at work. Bryan took over the business from Mike’s grandfather, Tom Bird.