Fine a bowler as Angus Fraser was, he probably wasn’t quick enough to get Robin Smith’s juices flowing. But the former England cricketer, and Independent cricket correspondent, may have summed up his old teammate better than most. “There have been many players who have suggested they would rather face 90mph throat balls than gentle leg-breaks but Smith is the only one I truly believe,” said England’s most skilful bowler of the early 1990s.
Nor was there any false bravado from Smith when he said, in many an interview, that he felt no fear against the quickest of the quicks, especially as he would often caveat it by admitting he was afraid of Shane Warne, whose leg-breaks were not gentle, but were rather less likely to inflict physical damage. Smith’s demons could be mental, but there were few braver batters in cricketing history. Few finer, too, when the speed gun showed deliveries timed at something approaching 100mph. From Donald Bradman to Brian Lara, there have been suspicions that some of the greatest ever had a slight susceptibility to raw pace. Smith was that rarity: he was better against it.
Smith has died at just 62; he played 62 Tests, too, and each number seems too few. But he excelled in the tail end of an era where there were more genuinely fast bowlers than before or since. He was a cricketer for those times; his international career was curtailed by the failings of England coaches and by his own issues with spinners. But when the pace was cranked up and the ball was pitched short, Smith was among the best there has ever been.
Perhaps no one has ever hit a square cut harder, and Smith hit a lot of them, too: it was his signature shot, designed for hard, bouncy pitches. But the other abiding image of him adorns the cover of his autobiography, his body contorted into the shape of a C, feet off the ground, head jutting back, bat going in the other direction, to avoid another bouncer.
He was suited to the gladiatorial arena of Test cricket, where there were more out-and-out fast bowlers. He was, indisputably, a Hampshire great, for his two decades of service and man-of-the-match contributions to two cup final wins in 1991 and 1992. Before then, a freewheeling 38 off 27 balls in the 1988 Benson & Hedges Cup 1988 propelled him into the England team. They faced the West Indies and he looked immediately at home. It felt fitting that Smith, who began with another 38, started off in partnership with Allan Lamb: a close friend, another who left apartheid South Africa and played for England, another who made a reputation for making runs against the West Indies.
Smith had cemented his place during the 1989 Ashes, a series when England were walloped, but he stood alone with 553 runs at 61, including two superb hundreds. Yet it was the West Indies who defined him more. Over Smith’s eight-year Test career, no one made more runs against the West Indies or more hundreds; of those with 500 runs, only Graham Gooch and – just – Mark Waugh averaged more. When Viv Richards’s side visited England in 1991, boasting a bowling attack of Malcolm Marshall, Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh and Patrick Patterson, Smith averaged 83 to rise to second in the world rankings. His 148 at Lord’s was, he felt, his finest innings. His 109 at The Oval helped England’s underdogs draw the series.
In the final months of his time with England, the West Indies encountered a last, magnificent display of defiance. On what Mike Atherton called the worst pitch he had ever experienced, England were shot out for 147 and 89 at Edgbaston in 1995. Smith, with 46 and 41, stood alone, bruised, battered, but brilliant.
His preparation arguably had begun early. There was a cricket pitch in the family backyard in Durban, his father turning up the speed on the bowling machine. There was not too much high-class spin bowling in South Africa in the 1970s and early 1980s; Smith was a product of his environment.
He made an early impression in England after joining his older brother Chris at Hampshire. In his Middlesex days, Simon Hughes hit Smith on the helmet with a bumper. He tried another. It was followed by two sounds: the ferocious crack of ball on bat as he was hooked for six, and then the fielders laughing that he was stupid enough to bounce Smith twice in a row. Smith was only a teenager then, too, but his reputation as a specialist against the short ball was already established.
And if his overall Test record – 4236 runs at an average of 43.67 – is impressive, especially given the age he played in, a couple of his finest innings came in other formats. His 167 not out from 163 balls against Australia stood as England’s record ODI score for more than two decades. Six weeks later, representing Hampshire, he made a majestic 191 against Australia; it was a three-day match but it required just 191 deliveries.
It was, though, an Australia without Warne. Smith had endured a poor tour of India earlier that year and the emergence of the greatest leg-spinner was bad news for him; as Warne later proved, plenty of other England batters struggled against him, but the reputation as a poor player of spin dogged Smith. He had actually made a century against Sri Lanka in Colombo but was omitted for the 1994-95 Ashes. He was recalled to face the quicks of the West Indies and South Africa and was England’s top scorer in what proved his final Test.
It underlined the sense he was dropped too soon, mishandled by Raymond Illingworth, whose brand of unsympathetic man-management led Smith, years later, to call the Yorkshireman an “appalling person”.
Smith, in contrast, had an abiding popularity. The courageous player of fast bowling had a personal vulnerability; struggles with alcohol and mental health presented problems in life after cricket. Before then, he had persuaded his old tormentor Warne to join Hampshire. “The nicest bloke you could ever meet,” said the late Australian.
It was a theme of the tributes from those who knew him. For those who do not, the memories of Smith swaying out of the way of another 90mph bouncer and the noise of him hammering a square cut to the boundary will remain.
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