First Class

By Howard Moon
March 1 2009

Before the new season really does loom into view, it seems appropriate to bid farewell to departing captain Ed Smith, who retired from cricket this winter following both injury and intrigue at Middlesex last season. Howard Moon has written a brilliantly balanced and thoughtful piece which I'm sure will generate a great deal of thought and possibly also comment.

Ed the Duck, Ed0, Smiffy, Smudge: few divided opinion like Ed Smith. Some said he was weak outside off stump, others were shocked he didn’t play more for England. His captaincy style was either Brearley-esque or too autocratic. And his books were applauded by some critics, panned by others, and gave almighty irritation to his team-mates at Kent.  

For most of us on the boundary edge, we’ll never truly know how good or bad his technique was, or whether he really did rub people up the wrong way. However, I have rarely let ignorance get in the way of forming an opinion. So, in this spirit: Ed Smith was – for me – one of the most impressive county cricketers of his generation.   

It was his history of quiet bloody-mindedness that made him so admirable. This was a batsman who practically bludgeoned his way into the England side in 2003 through sheer weight of runs – 1000 runs by June, and six centuries in consecutive matches; who drove his way to 64 on Test debut, against Ntini, Pollock and co at their peak; who, in late 2004, and only days before cutting all ties with Kent, smashed a stunning one-day century for a team which so clearly hated him; and who last summer, despite breaking an ankle on six, batted on without a runner for thirty more runs to take his team to the brink of victory. (The rest, as they say, is history).   

Not a bad looking shot for a man on a broken foot, making history  

This was a student who got a double-first at Cambridge while captaining the Blues; an author who found time to pen a riveting diary during a record-breaking summer; a public-school cricketer who wrote about baseball players from the Bronx; and a modern-day Stoic who opted to tough it out at Middlesex despite an awful 2006 (during which, lest we forget, he was dropped – albeit temporarily).  

Cricket needs more individuals like Ed Smith. In a world of the anodyne, the sound bite and the media-trained, Smith was a refreshing antidote: a scholar cricketer, as Frank Keating once put it, who could think as well as bat. Perhaps, to my outsider’s eyes at least, it was these thinking qualities which lost him favour at Lord’s last summer. Presumably his eagerness to challenge the status quo won him few friends in the dressing room, but I could be wrong.  

In any case, I’ve always felt Smith was underappreciated at Middlesex. He was usually said to be underperforming, but in three full seasons at the club, he hit nearly 4000 first-class runs at 42, chalked up 12 centuries, and generally brought class and experience to an otherwise frail upper-order. Smudge, we’ll miss you. Or I will, at least.