Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

130 year and third place in 1981, but championship success remained more elusive. In 1982 Warwickshire sank to bottom place in both Championship and Sunday League. Former Test bowlers Chris Old and Norman Gifford were recruited to give the side experience, Gifford soon taking over as captain from Willis. Results improved briefly but in 1987 they were as bad as ever: fifteenth in the Championship and bottom of the John Player. Talented players such as Andy Lloyd, Geoff Humpage and Gladstone Small, were still making their mark, but a wretched decade found sections of the membership growing restive, and matters came to a head shortly after David Heath had succeeded Alan Smith as Chief Executive in 1986. The previous year, as a committee member, Heath had taken up the chairmanship of the Cricket Committee in the wake of a members’ vote of no confidence in that committee. Despite offering to resign once he had become a paid employee, Heath had remained in post. The committee could find no obvious replacement, Mike being reluctant to take over at the very moment when his own son was starting his career with the county. Neil had grown up with cricket. He was almost cast in a near- identical mould to his father until Mike, on his way to the registry office, concluded that N.J.K. Smith was just too close for comfort. Among the babysitters minding the young Neil Michael Knight Smith at the Leamington home had been Eddie Hemmings, in his early days on the county staff. ‘It was known as a fun-and-frolic night when Eddie came round,’ says Mike. Then, as Neil grew up at Wootton Court, there had been net sessions with Kanhai, Savage and others passing through. At Warwick School Neil’s sport flourished. He played cricket in county junior elevens, and was in the Midlands Under-15 side at a regional festival where the North was captained by Mike Atherton and included Mike Roseberry, later to play for Middlesex and Durham. As his schooldays were coming to end, Neil’s interview with the careers master was a short one. ‘What do you want to do, Neil?’ ‘Play cricket, sir.’ ‘Go and see your father! Next! …’ When Warwickshire showed no initial interest in signing him, Neil applied to join the MCC Young Professionals staff at Lord’s. Unfortunately for Neil, head coach Don Wilson maintained a balanced squad and the off spinner was Adrian Pierson, so there was no place. However, halfway through the 1985 season Pierson was taken onto the Warwickshire staff – he was later to play for Leicestershire, Somerset and Derbyshire – and his place at Lord’s Triumphs and tribulations as Chairman