Lives in Cricket No 40 - Edwin Smith

15 The young cricketer was something about the slight youngster. He got good spin from a grip that came naturally to him, while he had the natural and precious gift of flight, this following a short, skipping run of six paces that took little out of him and meant he could bowl long spells. While the succession of seam bowlers in the county was known to cricket fans across of the country, Derbyshire had more recently enjoyed a 30 year period when they had seldom been without a spinner of note. Of these, only Leslie Townsend, an allrounder of considerable talent before the Second World War, had bowled off spin, but such was the strength of the attack at that time that he often appeared to bowl as an afterthought. Few teams could cope with the pace of Bill Copson, whose health and fitness was the only barrier to a lengthy international career, or the aggression and movement from brothers Alf and George Pope. Copson was long-limbed and walked with a shuffling gait, but when his body allowed him to do so he could be as quick as anyone in the country for a few overs. Alf Pope was the workhorse, happy to bowl long spells and frequently being asked to, especially in the county’s Championship summer of 1936, when his brother was hors de combat for most of the season. George was the craftsman, who had learned to bowl the leg-cutter from the great Sydney Barnes and at times seemed to have the ball on a piece of elastic, one that he pulled this way and that to leave even the best batsmen groping and helpless. With wickets often suiting their talents, this trio cut a swathe through county batting line-ups throughout the 1930s, but Townsend came into his own when there was any spin – which was often, for away games, as opponents tried to negate the Derbyshire seamers. He took 1088 first-class wickets between 1922 and 1939 and added, for good measure, 19,555 first-class runs. Yet in that strong bowling line-up, he wasn’t regarded as the lead spin bowler. That title went to Tommy Mitchell. A leg spin bowler with a well-disguised and deadly googly, he took 1483 wickets between 1928 and 1939 at an average of just 20. Bowling with a lively, twirling action, his long fingers enabled him, in the words of former Derbyshire groundsman Walter Goodyear, to ‘spin the ball on ‘owt’. He was a mercurial character and sometimes was less than keen to bowl, but his ability to find spin, when there appeared little for anyone else, was appreciated by his captains and team-mates alike. Although asked to return to the county after the war, Mitchell, by then 43, declined, claiming he could do better working at the colliery and playing as a league professional. This left an opening for the wonderfully named Albert Ennion Groucutt Rhodes, better known to cricket fans as ‘Dusty’ - or simply ‘Bert’. Rhodes, the father of later Derbyshire seam bowler Harold, was a fine leg spin bowler who had switched from seam bowling with great success.