Lives in Cricket No 40 - Edwin Smith

29 on the boundary. The press were effusive in their praise. ‘Edwin Smith is a remarkable young bowler,’ wrote former Australian opening batsman Jack Fingleton, while his erstwhile team mate, the legendary Bill O’Reilly, was even more enthusiastic. He deemed it ‘a stirring display of highly-intelligent bowling’ - praise indeed, from a man regarded as one of the game’s greats. Rain prevented Derbyshire making an attempt on a winning target of 275 on the final day, the game ending in a draw. Yet Edwin had perhaps his most encouraging figures yet and more reason to feel he could make the grade as a county cricketer. What he needed was a solid season to cement his place. He had taken 28 wickets at 35; steady but not spectacular and Reg Carter had taken half that number of wickets in 400 fewer overs, albeit with the benefit of bowling on the most spin-friendly wicket of the summer. In finishing sixth with such an inexperienced seam attack, the county had exceeded expectations. It was perhaps unrealistic of Derbyshire to place the role of lead spin bowler in the hands of a young man still in his teens; his back up, Carter, only two months older. Yet the reality was that for much of that decade, Cliff Gladwin and Les Jackson reigned supreme. There were few occasions when both failed to take wickets. Usually one or the other could find sufficient movement to get among the opposition batsmen and when wickets were falling they were happy to keep bowling. The groundsman at Derby during this period was the legendary Walter Goodyear. He had taken over the role in 1938 and, returning to his duties after the war, he remained in charge of wickets at the County Ground until his retirement in 1982. What were they like? Walter explains. They got a Walter Goodyear wicket and for a long time I prepared them specifically for Les Jackson. People used to turn up for matches and ask me how it would play. My answer was usually the same. ‘If we win the toss we’ll put the buggers in and Les will have three or four wickets before lunch’. He usually did, you know. If he didn’t, I was for it! It was much the same at Chesterfield, where the majority of home matches were played at that time. While the ball turned more than at Derby, where only in the last couple of sessions of a game could a spinner expect to come into his own, generations of seam bowlers smiled in anticipation of a trip to Queen’s Park. Edwin returned to Grassmoor for the winter of 1953, and returned to the County Ground in April 1954 knowing that he had a big season ahead of him. Escape from year-round work at the pit was possible, but first he needed to cement a place in the Derbyshire side. Pre-season training began a few weeks before the cricket itself. Most of the players kept fit by a range of manual jobs and got fit for playing cricket First team regular - and capped