Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

128 their frustration when Cowdrey had thoughts of his own. Geoff Boycott is another to have sung Mike’s praises, remaining ever grateful for advice freely given on playing in spectacles when he had been a young player. ‘Geoff told me he thought it was the end of the world when he was told he’d got to wear spectacles,’ Mike remembers, saying that he had written back stressing the benefit of regular testing, and with advice to get plastic lenses. Boycott never lost his respect for Mike, finding him an attentive and sympathetic captain when he was struggling for runs on his first tour. Concern for those who were having a tough time was a hallmark of Mike’s captaincy, well remembered by Jamie McDowall, whose first-team career with Warwickshire ran to just a dozen matches. ‘He was good at lifting you up when things hadn’t gone well. But if they had, he didn’t let you get above yourself. He was a great leveller.’ Universally popular with his Warwickshire colleagues, Mike is remembered as a skipper with a light touch. ‘He was very well liked, so the team was prepared to follow him,’ says Alan Smith. ‘He believed that established cricketers knew their business and that’s why they had got where they were. He didn’t look to interfere too much.’ In the words of Jack Bannister, in his History of Warwickshire County Cricket Club : ‘He was one of the few post-war captains, both in county cricket and at international level, who finished as he began – without an enemy in the world.’ A final balance sheet