Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

126 I didn’t sweep it.’ Mike was prone to be out lbw – this mode of dismissal accounted for 15.7% of his completed innings against only 11.5% across English first-class cricket during his years in the game – but it was the pace men rather than the spinners who most often trapped him. Mike hears today’s commentators talking of ‘getting the left leg out of the way to free the arms.’ To him this is ‘a load of rubbish’. He explains his method: ‘I used to sweep on line and the first thing I did was to put my left leg forward and across so that, if I missed the ball, I was outside the line and not lbw.’ He stresses that the shot may be preselected but, with a slow bowler, it can always be checked and changed. ‘Sometimes, if I was struggling a little bit, I’d put my left foot across so the ball would hit it outside the line of the off stump and then swing away with no intention of trying to hit the ball.’ He adds: ‘You may say that’s sharp practice, but the umpire was never going to give you out because everybody could see that you’d swung the bat and who was to say whether you were really trying to hit it or not?’ Mike faced criticism from traditionalists, but his tactics enabled him to disrupt field placings. Pointing to the scorebook for the verdict on his approach, he challenges another coaching mantra. ‘The books will say that in sweeping you should hit down on the ball and roll the wrists over the ball. Well, generally I did the opposite! The arc of my bat was up and over the ball and I would close the face a little bit but not a lot, and as often as not I’d aim for the top of the ball so that I was happy to get a bottom edge on it and the ball hopefully would go for runs. If you get caught sweeping it is usually from a top edge somewhere behind square on the leg side. If you don’t close the face, that likelihood is less. I think that is a sounder technique.’ Playing left-armers through midwicket with straight-bat shots, Mike again reckoned to hit the outside of the ball to counter the turn. To the casual spectator he appeared to whip the ball with his bottom hand, but he refutes this. Seeing the danger of a leading edge in using the bottom hand and closing the face, he preferred to let the top hand guide the bat and hit through the line with a propensity to be on the outside of the ball, while being very careful not to close the face too much. If there was an adventurous side to Mike’s batting, regular partners might reflect on his communication. ‘He beckoned you instead of calling you,’ says Jim Stewart. Bob Barber agrees, citing A final balance sheet