Cricketer Of The Week:

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28158, 22 December 1956, Page 5

Cricketer Of The Week:

F. B. Smith

rpHE man or boy with an incurable attack of cricketomania will discover artistry and romance in the most uncompromising of dead bat strokes. He will find a long defensive innings satisfying, if it is justified by the state of the game. To him a maiden over need not be so many blank minutes, but another round in an unceasing duel between bat and ball, with speed and swerve or flight and spin opposed by footwork and batting judgment. But he. as much as the average spectator, and as much as the raucous rabble of the uninitiated, delights in the cleanly-hit stroke which sends the ball scudding to the boun-

dary, or over it. Much modern cricket has a factoryproduced look, with white-uniformed attendants producing their undistinguished, and often indistinguishable quota of runs or wickets. Eut here and there remains a cricketer whose sense of mischief has not been extinguished, and who persists with an old-fashioned theory that in cricket it is desirable to hit the ball as hard and as often as possible. Such a cricketer is F. B. Smith, who last played one of the few innings worthy of the name. When Smith came out to bat, half an hour before stumps, East Christchurch and Old Boys had spent five hours and three-quarters in totalling 154 runs off the bat. So Smith, typically, made 49 himself in his 30 minutes with audacious and thrilling strokes. Smith’s batting is not always a sound proposition. He is a constant reminder of the disillusionment of Joe Hardstaff senior, after a day’s umpiring of a match in which Joe Hardstaff junior made 40 or 50 beautifully, and was then magnificently caught off a fierce hook. Father Hardstaff sat morosely, silently at the tea table for a long and .uncomfortable period. Then—“ Mother,” he said, “son’s a gambler.” There were times when Smith got cut unnecessarily at critical moments. His insistence on attack could get his side into trouble, but just as often, it routed an advancing and confident enemy. His innings last Saturday re-

called one on the same ground—also against East Christchurch—a few seasons ago. He then made a century in 42 minutes, and maintained the Saturday in the senior championship same dizzy speed in reaching 150. Smith is full of cuts which threaten decapitation of the close fieldsmen, forceful drives, violent hooks and pulls. From the moment he takes guard and carefully cleans the end of the bat with a semi-circular sweep on the grass behind him, he means business. For the cricket public, it has been wonderful business. In representative cricket, Smith was, for a few years, the supreme attrac-

tion. He was one of the few batsmen of his time capable of drawing a crowd . In consecutive Plunket Shield innings, he made 106. 78. 10. 90, 78. 145, 31, 153, 22, 7 and 146. In all his shield appearances, he made 1383 runs and averaged 45: in his four test matches, he scored 237 runs and averaged 47; in England in 1949 he made his 1000 runs; in his senior club career his aggregate is 4570 and his average 32. Smith left representative cricket far too early: he withdrew from the Canterbury side and captaincy half-way through the series of 195*2-53, when he was 30. His batting was of butterfly brilliance, gaudy with strokes, free as the breeze. But if for the sweaty bowler, Smith’s glove was of velvet, his bat was a scourge. Smith now spends much of his time coaching schoolboys. Whatever they may fail to learn, they will remember that the ball is there to hit.