Lives in Cricket No 40 - Edwin Smith

23 pick up the bowling prize in the club’s awards night. It was a fine evening for the Smith family, with his brother, Arthur, picking up the batting prize. He was selected as twelfth man at Northampton that summer, but didn’t make it on to the field. The team stayed in The Angel Hotel and up the road was a snooker hall. The club coach, Denis Smith, went down there one evening and watched a player of undue self-confidence beating a local with ease. At the end of the game, Denis introduced himself and told him that there was a good player in his team, who were staying locally. The player agreed to play him, but when Denis returned a few minutes later, accompanied by Edwin, the man had gone! Ahead of Edwin lay a winter of work at the colliery. He had enjoyed his taste of county cricket and had showed that he could get good batsmen out. There was much to be done, but he was ready to do whatever was required to become an established county cricketer. He was surprised at the offers that came his way so early in his career. Derbyshire gave him a £2 a week retainer to ensure he didn’t go anywhere else, but he was offered a generous professional contract by Littleborough in the Lancashire League and there were other ‘name your price’ deals from league clubs, including Kilmarnock in Scotland and several others in the north of England. He also knew that he faced a challenge from Reg Carter, a slow left-arm bowler of considerable talent. He had played a few games for the second eleven with Edwin in 1951 and at that stage of their development there was little between them in the eyes of some people. The two were good friends, as Edwin explains: Reg was a few months older than me and he was a good bowler. The idea was that perhaps the two of us could both play as contrasting spinners. For that to have happened, I think that one of us would have needed to ‘kick on’ as a batsman, allowing the other to play as a specialist spinner. Reg suffered because they tried to switch him between seam and spin, but he didn’t get enough good level cricket to hone his skills. We got on really well, though and helped each other as much as we could in the nets. The highlight of his winter was when Edwin started ‘courting’, to use the local vernacular. He had known Jean Burton from school, but on a trip to North Wingfield with his brother, ran into her for the first time in a while. That she was pushing a pram was initially a cause for concern, but the baby was that of a friend and Edwin quickly offered to meet her at the cinema in Grassmoor that night. The response was somewhat non-committal, as she was seeing someone else at the time, but Edwin saved her a seat and she turned up. Can he remember the film? ‘No, it wasn’t that important,’ laughs Edwin, ‘but it would have been a cowboy!’ Carnage at Chesterfield