Lives in Cricket No 40 - Edwin Smith

113 An impossible task in that semi-final, which probably cost us the game. There were lads in the side who went on to good cricket careers, but two who played that summer felt their futures better served outside of the game. Godfrey Smith was a lovely, stylish batsman who never made the final step to the first team for some reason. He was a good player to watch and it was a shame he was perhaps just short of the county game standard. Chris Armishaw had some senior one-day games and looked a good bowler with definite long-term potential. He took four wickets in one match, but he had a good career in banking, which he felt was a better long-term option. The first team attack was well led in all forms of the game by the fast- improving Mike Hendrick and reinforcements arrived for John Player League matches in the shape of Yorkshire legend Fred Trueman. His signing was an attempt to boost attendances, but at the age of 41 his best days were well behind him. The action was still majestic, but he had been retired for three seasons and it showed both in the field and in the final product. The signing was a strange one. Was Edwin involved? No. Any signings were made on the recommendation of the captain and with the authority of the committee. Sometimes the latter may have felt that a particular signing had merit and would just do it. Some of them were hard for me to understand, if I am honest, but it wasn’t my area. Rightly or wrongly, I kept my head down and did what I was paid to do. Various names were mentioned as potential Derbyshire players, including Tom Graveney and Peter Parfitt. Newspapers suggested that Australian fast bowler Dennis Lillee would be the club’s new overseas signing, a move eventually scuppered by a serious back injury. The need for overseas recruitment came about when Chris Wilkins decided that he wanted to stay in South Africa at the end of the 1972 season, after three summers with the club. A new overseas player topped the shopping list and it was here, for the only time, that the committee acted upon a recommendation from the coach. Indian Test off spinner Srinivasan Venkataraghavan, more commonly known as Venkat, was a bowler of high quality, who fielded well close to the wicket, and was a handy batsman. The rationale was that such a bowler might help to bring on Geoff Miller and Bob Swindell, two off spinners of potential, while lending support to Fred Swarbrook when he returned to the staff. It was a move that ignored what appeared to be a greater need for a reliable batsman, while the encouragement of the young players didn’t go as planned, as Edwin explains: As the senior spinner, Venkat got choice of ends, which should have been the case. Because Geoff was a good batsman, we ended up playing