MJK Smith obituary: last dual international for England

Mike Smith, a prolific batsman and popular captain of England, belonged to the scorebook as much as he did the crease. He was one of a select band of cricketers sufficiently accomplished to be known throughout the game by their initials, in his case MJK. Unassuming and self-deprecatory, he was long able to joke about the additional entry of the chalkers when he was dismissed for a duck on his first-class debut in 1951: caught Fiddling, bowled Nutter.

MJK was playing for Leicestershire against Northamptonshire. He was a right-handed batsman and athletic close-to-the-wicket fielder who played in 50 Tests and was captain in half of them. Fair-haired and batting and fielding at short leg in glasses, he was as recognisable a figure to spectators as to statisticians, his poor eyesight not impairing his sporting ability in that he was talented enough to be a double international. He was capped once by England’s rugby selectors, at outside centre against Wales in 1956.

“It took some time to dawn that he was as good as he was, or such an excellent man,” wrote John Woodcock, the former cricket correspondent of The Times. “His appearance, I think, had something to do with this. To see him emerging from the pavilion in the Parks, as an outwardly gauche and gangling Oxford undergraduate, and to watch him taking guard, face screwed up behind those rimless spectacles, was not a convincing introduction.”

One of only a few first-class cricketers to play in glasses, Smith scored many of his near-40,000 runs on the leg side. He tended to be a poor starter and was susceptible to the yorker but was a good judge of line and length who liked to disrupt bowlers by working balls from off to leg and he had the knack of finding gaps in the best-set fields. He held some fine catches at short leg, where he stood fearlessly before the era of shin guards and helmets.

A pragmatic cricketer, not as stylish as contemporaries such as Colin Cowdrey and Ted Dexter, he observed that all bowlers except off spinners positioned most of their fielders on the off side, so considered it only sensible to aim to score most of his runs to leg. He was able to fetch to midwicket balls that pitched a foot or more clear of the off stump and swept and pulled effectively. He made his cricket debut for England in 1958 and hit two centuries in his first seven Tests, but overall he struggled to replicate his county form at international level.

Nor was he a flamboyant leader. He tended not to take risks and was a better captain of quick and medium-pace bowlers than spinners, but he had an excellent cricket brain, a cool temperament and a sense of humour. He was well liked by his fellow players. In The Last Corinthian, a biography by Mike Thompson, Smith is depicted as “democratic in his approach without being too easily influenced, competitive without being aggressive, utterly straightforward in all his dealings and unfailingly cheerful and good-humoured, except perhaps when he knew he had received a bad decision or his authority was challenged. He treated everybody as equals, irrespective of rank or class.”

Michael John Knight Smith grew up in Broughton Astley, Leicestershire, the son of Maurice Smith and his wife, Muriel (née Bird), whose family had been village blacksmiths since the beginning of the 18th century. Mike’s first-class debut came while he was still at Stamford School in Lincolnshire. After National Service in the army he went up to St Edmund Hall, Oxford, to read geography, captaining the university in his final year. He set a record by scoring centuries in three successive summers in the Varsity match at Lord’s: 201 not out in 1954, 104 in 1955 and 117 in 1956.

As a fly half at Oxford, Smith formed a dazzlingly inventive half-back pairing with a Welshman, Onllwyn Brace. On the strength of his performance in the 1955 Varsity match, he was chosen to play for England against Wales at Twickenham but, by his own estimation, he had a poor game and was not selected again. Brace played on the other, victorious, side and went on to win nine caps.

In 1956 Smith moved to Warwickshire, whose offer of an administrative job enabled him to play county cricket as an amateur. He captained the club from 1957, when he was only 23, to 1967, initially with little success. But during the early 1960s they were successively third, fourth and second in the County Championship and in 1966 Smith led them to victory in the Gillette Cup final at Lord’s.

His early years with Warwickshire were especially productive and in six successive seasons from 1957 he made more than 2,000 runs. His best was 3,245, at an average of almost 58, in 1959, helped by a dry summer and fast pitches. He was the youngest batsman, at the age of 26, to reach 3,000 runs in a season and his total of 1,209 in July remains one of the highest for a single month.

When he first played for England in 1958, it was as an opener against New Zealand at Edgbaston (his home ground) making 0 and 7. After two more matches he was dropped but, recalled against India the following summer, he responded with 100 in his first match and 98 in the second. He toured West Indies in 1959-60, playing in all five Tests with scores of 108, probably his best Test innings, and 96. Getting out in the nineties became a habit. Against South Africa in 1960 he was dismissed for 99 and he made the same score (run out) in Pakistan the following winter. In India during that tour of the subcontinent he was out for three successive ducks, making a total of nine in his first 20 Tests.

After such patchy form he was dropped from Test cricket for two years, returning as captain for the 1963-64 Indian tour. Dexter, the incumbent, was unavailable for the trip. Smith led a weak and depleted side well, and made useful runs, but Dexter resumed as captain against Australia in the summer of 1964, when Smith was not even chosen as a batsman.

Dexter, however, retired from Test cricket while still in his prime and Smith returned to lead England in South Africa in 1964-65. During the series he hit 121, his highest and final Test century and was the obvious choice as captain in Australia in the following winter. But his position was undermined even before the tour began when MCC bizarrely announced that Billy Griffith, the manager, would have authority to override the captain’s decisions. In practice Griffith rarely intervened and the two men worked amicably. It was a dull series and Smith’s contribution was modest, averaging less than 18.

He retained the captaincy for the first Test against West Indies in 1966 but after a heavy defeat, and failure with the bat, he was deposed and dropped. Woodcock felt he might have been too independent of mind for the liking of the selectors. In addition, George “Gubby” Allen, the grand vizier at Lord’s, felt he was too defensive-minded. After the 1967 season Smith announced his retirement from first-class cricket. As his county form was still impressive and he was only 34, it seemed a premature move. Three years later he was persuaded back.

In 1972 he was recalled to the Test side against Australia. Although on form he was worth his place, he was pushing 39. He batted gamely for three matches but struggled against the pace of Dennis Lillee and Bob Massie. It was the end of a Test career in which he made 2,278 runs at an average of 31.63. He continued playing county cricket until 1975, his final first-class tally being 39,832 runs, with 69 centuries, at an average of 41.84. He set three Warwickshire records which, because of the reduced programme, are unlikely to be broken: most runs in a season (2,417 in 1959), most catches in a season (52 in 1961) and most catches over a career (422).

In retirement he ran a country club, incorporating squash and tennis, and became a prominent figure in cricket administration. He was chairman of Warwickshire from 1991 to 2003 and was instrumental in signing Brian Lara, the record-breaking West Indies batsman. Lara repaid him by making 501 not out against Durham, the highest individual score in first-class cricket. The club named gates at Edgbaston in his honour.

Smith was a leading candidate to succeed Dexter as chairman of selectors in 1994 but the job went to Ray Illingworth — one of very few people about whom he had reservations. It was felt that a tougher hand was needed and Smith’s Oxbridge background, which probably helped him to gain the England captaincy, may now have counted against him. He did, however, manage England teams to West Indies and Australia in the 1990s and he became an International Cricket Council match referee, officiating in four Tests and 17 one day internationals.

His wife, Diana (née Leach), whom he met on an Oxford and Cambridge rugby tour of Argentina and who worked with him at his club, predeceased him. He is survived by their son, Neil, who played for Warwickshire and represented England in one-day matches, and their daughters, Barbara, an accountant who looked after him in his old age, and Carole, a journalist who was married to Sebastian (now Lord) Coe, the Olympic athlete.

“Of how many cricketers may it be said, at the end of a long and distinguished career, that he made no enemies?” wrote Woodcock. “Precious few is the answer to that — but Mike Smith is one of them. Between 1951, when he first appeared for Leicestershire, and 1975, when he played his last game for Warwickshire, he became, and remained, one of the players’ favourite players.”

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