Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

73 Chapter Nine ‘If you can stand up, you’re playing’ The restoration of Graveney, now qualified and able to play for Worcestershire, and the emergence of Parfitt meant that there was no middle-order place for Mike in the side that overwhelmed a weak Pakistan team in the Tests of 1962. With early speculation on the composition of the party to tour Australia, the clerical collar of David Sheppard, due a sabbatical, was thrown into the ring. Returning to cricket in mid-June, he had opened with a hundred at Oxford and his first championship match, against Warwickshire, brought the news hounds flocking to Hove. Ian Wooldridge, writing in the Daily Mail , enjoyed the irony of his day in the press box as ‘men wound fresh paper into typewriters and grabbed telephones to break the tragic news’ of Sheppard’s four-ball duck. It was a headline that suddenly dwarfed an earlier innings of 163 by Mike. Batting for only 200 minutes, he had hit a six and 25 fours, all but one, Wooldridge noted, on the leg side. ‘Where does this leave Smith?’ he pondered, pointing out that Mike’s Test career had become ‘a jagged graph of selection, rejection, triumph and failure.’ With nine ducks in 35 innings, Wooldridge conceded that he had ‘already received more last chances than the most plausible old lag.’ The selectors concurred and his name was never in the frame for Australia. For Warwickshire, however, Mike’s value was unquestioned. For the sixth year in succession he exceeded 2,000 runs, taking his first-class tally in six English seasons to 14,924, a figure exceeded in post-war cricket only by Hutton and evidence that he was the most valuable county batsman of his era. This year he had more support, with Stewart’s runs second only to Mike’s 1959 record and Billy Ibadulla also passing the 2,000 mark for the first time, as Warwickshire leapt up the table to third. With Bridge, a major force in 1961, now having lost all confidence and form and soon to be lost to the game, the lack of spin seemed to galvanise the quicker bowlers. Cartwright gave notice that he would be a dominant county bowler for some years to come, while Bannister had his best ever summer and Albert Wright, in his only full season, also passed 100 wickets. Mention of Wright, a youngster from the