Lives in Cricket No 40 - Edwin Smith

57 There were around 3,000 there, but I have had a lot more than that claimed to have been on the ground over the years! Irrespective of the bad weather, the summer was a triumph for Les Jackson. He was 37 before the season and suffered a groin strain in the opening fixture against Oxford University. Although missing six Championship matches that year, he finished it top of the national bowling averages, with 143 wickets in all games at 10.99 each. It was the lowest average of any bowler taking a hundred wickets in the 20 th century and testimony to his skill in a summer in which he cut down his pace, but still continued to move the ball at speed in either direction. How good was he? Edwin is quick in his reply. Les was the best. None of us would have swapped him for any other bowler in the country. Fred Trueman was quick when conditions suited him, he had a point to prove, or he had his back up; Brian Statham was quick and accurate, but Les just kept on bowling, whatever the conditions. He wasn’t lightning fast, more awkward. Harold Rhodes was much quicker, but Les seemed to arrow the ball in at the batsmen’s ribs and thighs and most of them got hit at one time or another. When Tom Graveney played against us and saw Les, he used to rub the inside of his thighs as a joke, because he had done it many times before at the crease! Ask any batsman of that era who they least like facing and Les would always be in the top three. Yet this modest man, who was 26 before he played for the Derbyshire senior team, had none of the brashness of others on the circuit. He didn’t indulge in ‘verbals’ and if a catch was dropped off his bowling, he was the antithesis of his colleague, Cliff Gladwin. Les would sometimes smile, maybe clap his hands in recognition of a decent attempt and then say ‘Bad luck, catch next ‘un’. Nothing riled him. There was one occasion, when we played Kent at Chesterfield, I was fielding in close for Les, as he bowled at Colin Cowdrey. The ball was fairly fizzing through and Colin, a good player of quick bowling, was really struggling against him. We all kept raising our eyebrows at one another and eventually I went over to Les between overs. ‘You’re going through fast today,’ I said to him, hoping for the reason. ‘I’m just seeing how quick I can bowl, Edwin,’ was his reply. Nothing more than that, he just wanted to test himself against a very good player. His team mates of the era attest to Les moving the ball around on the green linoleum floor of the indoor cricket school, something no one else managed to do. The shrewd soon realised that if they allowed him to get them out early, he would ease back. He liked to prove a point, to himself, Les