Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

98 Ashes frustration trap for acting captain Booth. Perhaps he was too close as an early chance was spilled, but Booth was unnerved and two balls later he was bowled. Brown then removed Lawry, after which the spinners took over. ‘Smith’s field positions were so aggressive,’ wrote Crawford White in the Daily Express , ‘that the Aussies were convinced the ball was spinning twice as much as it was.’ Before long Sincock pushed forward and was brilliantly caught by Mike leaping to his right, the first of three catches he held in the morning session. Ten minutes after lunch the match was won. Titmus, who had been having a lean time, took four for 40 to match Allen’s four for 47. The spinners led the team towards the gate. Then they stood back to let Mike lead his side off. ‘That was our feeling towards MJK,’ says Allen. ‘It’s usually the bowlers that walk off showing the ball, but we said no – he’s done a lot towards this. He’s our leader. Let him take the plaudits.’ For Mike the four-day win brought the unexpected bonus of an extra day with his family. Ted Dexter’s side had suffered the distractions of the Earl Marshal as manager, a captain’s wife with modelling contracts and a leading amateur with preaching engagements. Now there were different non-cricketing headlines with a more plebeian flavour as Mike was pictured with three-year- old Barbara and reported to be changing nappies for baby Carole. The previous winter, while Mike was in South Africa, Diana had been kept busy with moving into the cottage they had bought in the Warwickshire village of Lapworth, but she was determined that they would not be separated for so long again. Accompanied by Bob Barber’s wife and daughter, she and the children had arrived in Adelaide aboard the S.S. Orsova in mid-December and met up with Mike in good time for Christmas. ‘He worked terribly hard,’ says David Allen, speaking of the range of Mike’s commitments. ‘He was skippering the side, doing all the functions. Then we’d come back to the hotel and relax with a beer and Mike would be in the pool with the kids. I thought at times it was too much.’ In fact, Diana did not spend much time close to the team. Her own sporting passions had been riding and golf, but life in the Argentine had taught her the rudiments of cricket – ‘I had learnt not to commit any serious breach of etiquette like walking behind the bowler’s arm,’ she had told a magazine reporter. After marriage she had learnt more of the game’s nuances and enjoyed watching Mike whenever she could. ‘Mum said to me once,’ Barbara recalls, ‘that I was breast-fed in every away changing