Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

25 Chapter Three A cricketer’s hands on an oval ball ‘I was a cricketer,’ Mike always insists, but rugby still remains close to his heart, his single international cap cherished for the privilege it brings of the right to buy tickets for England’s home matches. Rugby had started, along with hockey, as Mike’s winter game at Stamford as he waited for the cricket season to come round. When he went up to Oxford, though he had already made his mark with Hinckley, he still began by playing for his college. ‘There was a list – who’s available for rugby? You put your name down if you wanted to play.’ But the university hierarchy had not overlooked him. A freshmen’s trial went well, The Times reporting that he ‘showed himself to be a quick-thinking stand-off half who, once in receipt of the ball, got his three-quarters moving smoothly.’ A few weeks later, when the Greyhounds, the University’s second side, were well beaten by the seniors, to the same newspaper it was ‘baffling how some of the Greyhounds found themselves on the field’. But one man was excused censure: ‘Smith was head and shoulders above all the other backs.’ Two of the Oxford side sustained injuries in the match, so when the team was chosen to meet Gloucester on the Saturday, Mike was included at fly half. He was not to win a Blue that first term, but with more opportunities after Christmas, when those in their final year were no longer picked, he began his second winter as a strong contender. These were times when Oxbridge teams, with the maturity of those who had done National Service, were a match for any club side. It helped, too, that there was a steady supply of Rhodes scholars, many of them accomplished sportsmen. Meanwhile the amateur ethos of club rugby brought opponents with lower levels of fitness and preparation, men with full-time jobs that gave them little time for serious training and practice. Oxford’s outstanding player and captain in 1954 was Paul Johnstone, a South African who had toured Great Britain and France in 1951/52 with one of the strongest of all Springbok sides, a team that had won all five of their international matches. A winger for South Africa, Johnstone had started the Oxford season