Lives in Cricket No 40 - Edwin Smith

123 The retired cricketer best he has seen, while being less convinced in the legitimacy of Muttiah Muralitharan’s action. When I watched Muralitharan, I thought back to the treatment Harold Rhodes had and it saddened me. Bruce Dooland and Richie Benaud were wonderful leg spinners, while George Tribe was also an outstanding bowler. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were probably a dozen off spinners who never got an opportunity in international cricket, all of them much better than the best of the current batch. It was a different world. Edwin still follows cricket and the fortunes of his beloved Derbyshire. Old habits die hard.