Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

118 Chapter Fourteen ‘Would you mind if I came back?’ His good friend Alan Smith remembers Mike’s tentative enquiry before the start of the 1970 season: ‘Would you mind if I came back?’ The side to which he was welcomed back as vice-captain had seen important changes. They had bidden farewell to Tom Cartwright, who had moved to Somerset, and to Jim Stewart, who had opted to end his playing days with Northants. Bob Barber had moved on to a career in business and Jack Bannister had also retired. Dennis Amiss and John Jameson remained as key run-getters, but in 1968 the regulations had been relaxed to allow the counties to sign an overseas player with no birth or residential qualification. It had enabled Warwickshire to sign Lance Gibbs, while Rohan Kanhai, able to qualify through his home in Blackpool, also joined. Of all the batsmen with whom he played for Warwickshire, Kanhai stands supreme in Mike’s estimation. ‘He was very difficult to keep quiet. Playing with him over a period, you thought if I played that innings it would be as good an innings as I’d ever play in my life, but he’d play two or three of those a year.’ With Kanhai and Gibbs lost to the county for several Rest of the World ‘Test’ matches and the attack lacking the teeth it had once had, Mike’s first season back saw Warwickshire only equal seventh in the Championship, but the next two years were to be the most successful of his long career. In 1971 there was a tie with Surrey at the top of the table, the two counties separated in Surrey’s favour only by their higher number of wins. Initially Gibbs had struggled to adjust his bowling style to the demands of county cricket, but his 131 wickets now made him comfortably the leading wicket- taker in the country. Mike was a huge admirer of Gibbs’ talent. He remembers the off spinner telling him that he had started bowling leg spin until a mauling from Bruce Pairaudeau in a Guyanese trial in the West Indies led him to believe that there had to be a better way to operate. Almost overnight he had turned to off spin. Mike expounds on Gibbs’ technique compared with English off