Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

22 Mike had enjoyed an outstanding summer, his tally of runs and his average for Oxford both surpassing those of Cowdrey, who would soon be sailing for Australia with Len Hutton’s team. His success as a freshman marked Mike out as the obvious candidate for the position of Secretary of OUCC, effectively ensuring that he would be Oxford’s captain in 1956. Mike’s second summer at Oxford began with the only prolonged barren run of his university career. As his bad trot continued, there were disturbing indications of vulnerability against top-class fast bowlers at the start of an innings. Against Lancashire he bagged a pair, bowled twice by Brian Statham, while other pace bowlers who pierced his defences with the new ball included John Warr, Jack Flavell and Peter Loader. If Mike had a weakness as his career progressed, it was the fast yorker early on. ‘I can see him hopping about now when Brian pitched it up at him,’ says Jack Bond of later encounters for Warwickshire against a Lancashire attack led by Statham. Oxford’s captain in 1955 was C.C.P. Williams, later to become Lord Williams of Elvel and author of a fine biography of Sir Donald Bradman. Charles Williams preferred to retain the opening pair who had served Oxford so well the previous year, and his faith was repaid as Mike eventually regained his best form, ending his university season with 943 runs. With recent scores of 89 and 100 against Sussex and another hundred against MCC, he entered the Varsity Match in good heart. He had also had an off-the-field success when the university teams combined on television to outwit the sporting memory man Leslie Welch. All was going well for Welch until Mike impishly bowled him a googly by asking him to name the winner of a chariot race that took place in Rome many centuries before the birth of Christ. ‘I was no classicist. Charles Williams set that one up for me,’ Mike admits. Though Mike fell for only 25 in Oxford’s first innings, he heard on the Monday of the match that he had been chosen to play for the Gentlemen against the Players, still a prestigious match in which the England selectors chose players they had in mind for higher honours. Mike’s third century of the season came in Oxford’s second innings when, held back to number three, he stroked his way to 104 as the Dark Blues took up the challenge of scoring 313 at 74 an hour. His runs came in two hours and 20 minutes, E.W. Swanton in the Daily Telegraph commenting that ‘his bat was making the deep musical note of McLean’s or Compton’s’, but when he succumbed to a long hop from Gamini Goonesena leaving Oxford still needing 140 in 80 minutes, Williams resorted Records fall at Oxford