Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

35 in Chile, but for most of their time the touring party were in the Argentine, enjoying prolonged periods at the Hurlingham Club some 15 miles from the centre of Buenos Aires. Founded by the Anglo-Argentine community in 1888 and linked to the prestigious club of the same name in London, the Hurlingham Club was the centre of the country’s polo and also included two golf courses, tennis and squash courts and a cricket ground. ‘We lived like lords,’ David Brace remembers, commenting that the elite of the Argentine swept in at weekends, several arriving in private planes. On his flight out to Buenos Aires Mike had got into conversation with a fellow passenger who had expressed interest in why he was travelling to the Argentine. Hearing the purpose of his trip, he promised to introduce him to family and friends in the Hurlingham area – the name of the club extended to the wider residential locality of greater Buenos Aires. This chance encounter led to an invitation to stay the night with his new friend and was to provide an introduction to one of his wife’s cousins. The strikingly attractive young primary-school teacher who happened to pop in next morning was Diana Leach. Four years later she would become Mrs M.J.K. Smith. The Leach family was one of the most prominent in the Argentine, as Diana and her family always insisted on calling it, but their roots were in the Lancashire town of Rochdale, where Diana’s great-grandfather Robert Leach, born in 1820, prospered in the wool industry. Appropriately he also played cricket, so when the United England Eleven visited his home town in 1855, he was one of the 22 representing the Heally Club in a 14-wicket win. Bowled by John Wisden for none and by William Caffyn for three in the second innings, Robert Leach made little personal contribution to the victory. Nor was he more successful three years later when he appeared for Rochdale in a drawn game against the All-England and United England Combined Eleven. There was nevertheless a strong cricketing gene in the family. Robert sent ten of his eleven sons to Marlborough College, where most featured strongly in the cricket team and no fewer than five went on to play for Lancashire. They managed just 15 matches between them for the county: John, born 1846, played five matches; Robert, born 1849 and to become a Church of England minister, made three appearances; William Edward, born 1851, played five times; Roger Chadwick, born 1853, and Harold, born 1862, had one game each. Roger’s solitary appearance for Lancashire saw him make 39 against Sussex in 1885. This would have been on a rare visit home, for Romance in the Argentine