Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

17 Finding a small enough bat 179 against their Yorkshire counterparts, a strong team which included future Test players Doug Padgett and Ken Taylor, as well as Bryan Stott and Jack Van Geloven. This match came the day before Mike’s next venture into the first-class game, against Derbyshire. It was to be no happier an experience, but this time he was in good company as four team-mates also recorded ducks on a seamer-friendly pitch at Burton. Batting at number four and bowled by Cliff Gladwin, Mike saw the whole side dismissed for 45 before lunch on the first day. Though their second innings was less calamitous, Leicestershire still lost by an innings, but at least Mike was able to open his first-class account. ‘Bert Rhodes bowled me a googly, which I didn’t pick. It turned but it was a bit short and I hit it. Alan Revill was at short leg – it went past his ear for four.’ A home match against Kent brought one more run before Mike was snapped up at slip off Doug Wright by his friend Colin Cowdrey. Mike had first come to know Cowdrey, a tea planter’s son unable to return home for the school holidays, when he had stayed with relatives at Croft, some two miles from Broughton Astley. He and Mike had played local matches together, and Cowdrey had also captained the Southern Schools in Mike’s first match for The Rest. Mike remembers that on occasions two of the greatest names in Leicestershire cricket would appear at their local matches, George Geary and Ewart Astill, respectively coaches at Charterhouse and Tonbridge Schools. ‘Each said he had the best young batsman he had ever seen – Peter May and Colin Cowdrey. Not bad judges!’