Lives in Cricket No 40 - Edwin Smith

132 Team mates and friends that offered him little help and was a much better bowler on a good wicket than he was on one that helped him. That required bowling a different length and Edwin lost little in comparison to others of his time on a wicket that required discipline. The subtlety of his arm ball stays with me, swinging away and sometimes going off the seam. He had a job to do in the side, in shutting one end up and he did that to perfection for over 20 years. He should have played more one-day cricket than he did. We got a bit seamer-mad in the 1960s and Edwin would have given us variation, as well as being able to put bat to ball in the closing overs. Colin Tunnicliffe was spotted and signed to the Derbyshire staff by Edwin and went on to take over 500 wickets for the county, playing a starring role in the National Westminster Bank Trophy win at Lord’s in 1981. His memory of Edwin is of a coach who played a key role in the formative stage of his career. When you are a young player you have all sorts of people giving you advice, but Edwin was a man who had a lot of common sense. He commanded respect, not because he imposed rigorous discipline, but because he was so obviously in command of and knew so much about the game. I thought I was a decent bowler, but I had never seen a ball swing as much as Edwin’s arm ball did and that was off half a dozen paces! He was a lovely man and always had time to listen to you and help. I will always remember him for the way that he made me feel welcome, when I first joined the club. David Smith was a very solid, well-organised opening batsman who played with Edwin for several seasons, before retiring prematurely to take up a position in business. When I joined the staff in the mid 1960s, Edwin had been a fixture in the side for many years and was always the under card to the fine seam bowlers that dominated the county bowling from season to season. How talented was he? Well, he was a genuine finger spinner in the true sense of the word and bowled with a straight arm. He was beautifully positioned at the crease with a classic action and had the ability to bowl a very well disguised arm ball that fooled a lot of batsmen and collected him a lot of wickets. I think Edwin was respected by all of our opponents, but the fact that he bowled mainly on seaming tracks meant that he would not be classed with the likes of Laker, Titmus and Illingworth, nor the two Gloucestershire spinners Allen and Mortimore. Having said that, I had the pleasure of fielding first slip to him continuously for four seasons, so had the best possible view of his considerable talents.