Lives in Cricket No 40 - Edwin Smith

77 Bottom supposedly to bowl in tandem with Edwin. Once again, it was doomed to failure. Mick was another nice lad and he had some good figures for Northamptonshire, but a few of us felt that in recruiting him the club had not looked at the bigger picture. In bowling at Northampton, always helpful surfaces for a spinner, he had a better chance than most to impress, He also had George Tribe and Jack Manning to bowl with, so batsmen tended to have a go at him to try and break free, in much the same way that the rest of us benefited from Les and Cliff at Derbyshire. When Tribe and Manning retired, his figures declined, yet we signed him. It was a strange move and didn’t work out for him. Two players engaged that winter were John Harvey and Mike Page, who would become regular team mates. John was a good batsman and a very fine fielder in the covers. He was from Cambridge and fitted into the side really well for a good few summers. Mike was a Lancashire lad, from Blackpool and became a really good player. His soft hands made him a fine player of spin bowling and he usually did well against Leicestershire, where they had four spinners and the wickets were prepared to suit them. He was also a brilliant fielder close to the wicket and held a lot of catches off me, but everyone who played with him will remember Mike as being a lot of fun. He used to imitate Harold Bird when he umpired our games and it would get him quite agitated. You were never quite sure what Mike would do next. He was playing a second team game one day and had been having a bit of banter with Lancashire’s wicket-keeper, Keith Goodwin, who he knew very well. During the tea interval, Mike persuaded one of our seamers, Michael Glenn, to bowl a tomato to Keith, first ball after tea. He duly bowled a full toss and Keith hit it, bang in the middle of the bat and was showered in tomato seeds! Perhaps the biggest frustration for Edwin was the decision to overlook him for a testimonial the following summer, instead awarding one to Laurie Johnson in 1965. I always got on very well with Laurie, who was a lovely bloke and a very good cricketer. He had played in 1949 and had a few matches in 1950, but then didn’t play for the county again until 1955. I had played constantly since 1951 and had more years on the staff than him. I had been capped in 1954, whereas he wasn’t until 1958. The excuse I was given was that the decision was based on seniority