Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

124 Mike acknowledges that his technique against fast bowling was not as good as it might have been, ‘but I was getting away with it and getting my share of runs, certainly in county cricket.’ At the time when he played, counties had a more limited coaching staff and, as elsewhere, the role of Tom Dollery at Warwickshire was to concern himself with the second team. ‘A good coach may have convinced me that there was a better method than I was using,’ Mike feels, ‘but in the final analysis the batsman has got to work out his own method.’ ‘I worked out my own method against spinners,’ Mike adds. And it is as a fine player of spin, especially of the ball coming into him, that he has earned his reputation. ‘He called the off side the girls’ side, didn’t he?’ says David Allen, a great admirer of Mike’s ability to find the leg-side gaps. To Don Shepherd he was ‘a fantastic player, one of the first to employ the sweep to balls of a different length and line.’ John Mortimore, another to suffer at Mike’s hands, points out that Mike was helped by legislation designed to prevent negative bowling that penalised off spinners by restricting the number of leg-side fielders they were allowed – only five at one time. ‘He murdered off spinners,’ says Robin Hobbs, ‘but he wasn’t so good a player of the ball going away from him. I got him caught at slip a few times.’ A particularly effective player on low, slow pitches, Mike always relished the challenge of wet wickets. ‘With three-day cricket, given the choice, I would play on a wet wicket. I found the game so much more interesting. Dependent on your bowlers, you brought in more close catchers. The game was very much cat and mouse, and wet wickets sorted a lot of players out, both batsmen and bowlers. I recall Fred Titmus saying to me that the biggest test for a young spinner is to walk out there in wet conditions – because everybody knows he should be the vital man in that session. It’s like the penalty kick in the last minute of a football game. That’s why Eddie Hemmings got the nod over Peter Lewington at Warwickshire, because he was the better bowler when conditions were in his favour. Similarly Norman Gifford over Doug Slade at Worcester.’ Though he had a wide range of shots, from his earliest days Mike favoured the leg side, and he saw rich pickings to be had with left- arm spinners. ‘Bowling to seven men on the off, you’ve only got to hit him on the leg side and it’s four. I started sweeping the left- armers from outside the off stump down to the leg. I hit outside the line of the ball. I did it based on line. If it was a straight ball, A final balance sheet