Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

40 Capped as an opener along. He wasn’t frightened to ask for advice, and we did all we could to help him.’ From the outset his players accepted him into their ranks as leader. To Jack Bannister he was ‘a superb bloke to play for’, while Jim Stewart, a younger player making his way into the side, speaks of Mike as ‘a gentleman and a pleasure to play with.’ His players soon learnt that his style of leadership was undemonstrative – ‘no rushing up to you when you took a wicket,’ says Bannister – but Mike was never an autocrat and he soon had a happy side around him. ThoughMike’s credentials were already known, he would have liked to mark his arrival with some good scores, but his summer could hardly have had a less auspicious start. Chosen to play for MCC against Yorkshire at Lord’s, he began with a pair. Warwickshire’s first match, against Worcestershire at Dudley, brought a third duck. An unbeaten 77 in an hour and a half in the second innings to set up a challenging declaration brought some relief; but there were only 18 runs from Mike’s next six innings. The tide turned with 97 not out against Somerset as Warwickshire registered their first win of the season after trailing by 131 on first innings. Eight more victories came in the next ten championship matches to lift the county to second place in the table in early July. Mike was now in the groove, and though Warwickshire lost their way in the second half of the season, ending no higher than eleventh, their captain continued to bat with such consistency that he finished with over 2,000 first-class runs, comfortably heading the county’s averages. It had been a happy start in other ways. ‘The pleasure of 1957 was having a season with Eric Hollies,’ says Mike, who relished the leg spinner’s Black Country humour. He was grateful, too, for Hollies’ bowling. At 45 years of age he sent down the second- highest number of overs in the country that summer, giving his captain control at one end in match after match as he took 132 wickets at less than 19 each. Hollies apart, Mike had had an inexperienced bowling attack – and one that was top-heavy with pace men. The batting strength had lain at the top of the order, where the obdurate Gardner and the more fluent Norman Horner had made an effective opening pair. In the first half of the season Mike followed at number three, but when Jim Stewart came into the side he moved down to four. When 1958 came round all this was to change. Hollies’ well-earned retirement left the county almost bereft of spin, and before long