Lives in Cricket No 40 - Edwin Smith

12 For the local school children, life went on largely as it had done before. Food and commodities were in short supply but the resourcefulness of families ensured that meals were fashioned from the most basic of ingredients and that nothing was wasted. This continued for many years afterwards, rationing only ending in July 1954. By the summer of 1949, Edwin had started to attend cricket nets at Grassmoor Cricket Club. At 15, he was fleet-footed and sure-handed in the field and had impressed people in the nets with a natural and easy action that changed little throughout his long career. His family had played a major part in the history of the club, which dates from 1884. His grandfather, Arthur Bedford, had been a founder member and took seven wickets in the club’s first recorded game. A left-arm medium pace bowler, he made more money playing for local sides than he did working at the colliery. He once won the ‘All England Amateur Bowling Prize’, of two classic books with brass clasps. He continued to take wickets for years afterwards and earned himself a considerable reputation. Edwin’s father was himself a useful cricketer, being remembered as a good left-handed round-arm swing bowler who could score handy runs down the order. Meanwhile, Edwin’s elder brother, also named Arthur, became a mainstay of the club for decades. Making his debut in 1935, he played for Grassmoor until 1978 and made thousands of runs, as well as taking hundreds of wickets with a mixture of leg spin, top spin and off spin. He lost crucial years to the war but had a successful spell at Saltaire in the Bradford League. He then spent a short time on the county staff, making an appearance for Derbyshire as a substitute fielder in July 1947, against Kent, at Abbeydale Park in Sheffield, before the re-drawing of county boundaries made this a Yorkshire ground. Arthur’s contribution was catching the Kent opening batsman Leslie Todd from the bowling of a new young county bowler by the name of Les Jackson. It was quite a claim to fame, being involved in the first county wicket taken by a man who would go on to be regarded as the county’s greatest-ever bowler. Edwin in short had much to live up to as he made his Grassmoor debut for the second team. He performed steadily, if in unspectacular fashion, but it was as the balmy summer days turned cooler and the season entered its closing weeks that events conspired to change the course of his life. Grassmoor second eleven was lacking players by the last three games of the season and bowlers, in particular, were in short supply. The skipper, Wilf Hawkins, asked Edwin if he would like to bowl and was met with a trademark grin. Let him take up the story: I marked out a run to bowl medium pace and started to set a field, but Wilf told me “No – you are going to bowl off spin, like you do in the nets.” So I did. In that first match I took four for none against Dronfield, then the following week I took five for 37 at Whittington. The last game of Early days