Lives in Cricket No 40 - Edwin Smith

43 Being a professional The game itself was different. On the field, players were aware of their roles and there was little to no expectation of bowlers diving around. Both Les and Cliff were decent fielders, with a good pair of hands and decent arms. Les was especially good off his own bowling. He rarely bowled with a mid off, because he kept it short of a length so they couldn’t drive him. On several occasions I saw him run out batsmen at the non-striker’s end, when they thought they had hit the ball past him. He would swoop down quickly, stop it with his left hand, transfer quickly to the right and throw down the stumps. When it happened once we thought it a fluke, but he did it too often for that. As bowlers, we were deemed too important to the side to be diving to stop balls and potentially damage a shoulder or whatever. If it was near us, we did our best, but you seldom saw people diving to stop fours on the boundary. Closer to the wicket was different and I’ve rarely seen better close fielders than Derek Morgan, Alan Revill and Donald Carr. Off the field, players mixed at the end of the day’s play and chatted about life on the circuit, new players and the ones who had impressed them. It was an unofficial schooling for a young bowler like Edwin. There were so many good off spinners around. You’d struggle to name three good ones in the county game today, but there were three at Gloucestershire at the same time! They had John Mortimore, David Allen and ‘Bomber’ Wells, all very fine bowlers. Tom Goddard had only recently retired there too. Then there was the great Jim Laker at Surrey, as well as the under-rated Eric Bedser. Yorkshire had Ray Illingworth and Brian Close, Middlesex had Fred Titmus and Lancashire had Roy Tattersall. Wherever you played there was a good spinner and it was a magical time to play the game. At the end of the day we’d sit down with a pint and talk over the play, chat about different players on the circuit and how we bowled to them. You learned a lot from these sessions – as you had to do, picking the brains of people who were so good at their craft. I used to love the various festivals around the country, when you could go into the beer tent at the end of the day and relax. They were great times. It was hard work and there was little financial reward, yet a period remembered with fondness for the characters that he played with and the friendships made. Of many funny stories, Edwin still chuckles at one that featured the irrepressible Gladwin. Alan Revill had been batting on a fiery pitch and had edged a ball into his chin, which was bleeding profusely as he returned to the pavilion. A local doctor was summoned and, quickly realising that stitches were required, he asked for a half bottle of whiskey to be purchased.