‘A fearless hero for hapless England’ – Robin Smith obituary

In a time when the England team was frequently seen as a national joke, Robin Smith, 62, was one of the best fast bowlers.

Smith, moustache bristling, bravely taking on the terrifying West Indies pace attack or battling it out against the unrelenting Australians, was a familiar sight for England supporters for nearly a decade.

His trademark shot, a particularly potent square cut, earned him admirers all over the world and a feared adversary.

Robin Arnold Smith, a child of British-born parents, was born in Durban, South Africa, in 1963, and became a cricket and rugby prodigy.

He served as the inspiration for Barry Richards, a renowned South African Test opener, who later became a lifelong friend.

His parents even bought the next-door house, knocked it down and built a cricket pitch where Robin and his elder brother Chris could practise – complete with an early bowling machine – and hired ex-Natal player Grayson Heath to coach them.

At the age of 17, the younger Smith traveled to the Natal squad for drinks with Richards and Mike Procter, another great of South Africa, but his brother gave him an early break.

While Gordon Greenidge was away with the West Indies, Chris Smith made his debut for Glamorgan 2nd XI in 1979, scoring a century for the hosts. Hampshire were impressed enough to offer him a contract for 1980.

When Chris returned in 1981, 17-year-old Robin accompanied him and was quickly signed up after a successful trial.

The Smith brothers entered English cricket with a Walsall-born father and an Edinburgh-born mother at a time when the apartheid regime in South Africa imposed a permanent international ban.

When Greenidge or Malcolm Marshall were unavailable, Robin had to patiently wait for opportunities to play overseas.

His Hampshire debut came against Pakistan at Bournemouth in 1982. The teenager was allegedly bowled round his legs by wily leg-spinner Abdul Qadir as a sign of future struggles against spin.

In contrast, second XI bowlers were subjected to criticism for how much money it cost to replace the balls Smith had thrown out of the ground.

With Greenidge and Marshall away for the 1983 World Cup and then with West Indies in 1984, Smith had a longer spell in the side and hit the ground running as he became England-qualified in 1985, making more than 1, 500 runs that summer.

Even though Chris won eight Test caps, those who watched knew Robin was likely to surpass his brother. In 1988, Robin was called to England after playing a devastating innings in the Lord’s Benson &amp, Hedges Cup final.

The news broke on the morning of a Sunday League game at Edgbaston.

Smith entered Test cricket with England in disarray against West Indies. One of England’s four captains who took the field in the summer of 1988, Chris Cowdrey, led his first Test at Headingley.

Smith, who was born in South Africa, showed early that he was not overawed by a four-man pace attack led by his great friend Marshall, who had already hit 38 on the debut and who had teamed up with fellow South African-born batter Allan Lamb for a century.

This was an era when England chopped and changed players frequently, using 29 in the 1989 Ashes, but Smith soon established himself as one of the important cogs around which the team was built.

Smith’s bravery against fast bowling became a hallmark of his game after recording his first Test century in Manchester, which was a magnificent 143 against Australia.

He was at his happiest when he pulled, hooked, or cut the quicks while wearing a blue England helmet without a visor or grille.

Smith’s one-day international stats did not match his Test stats, but his 167 against Australia at Edgbaston in 1993 remained an England ODI record until 2016.

Smith was single-minded about batting – his first book was entitled Quest for Number One. In fact, in 1991, according to Smith, the International Cricket Council’s retrospective world rankings placed him second behind Graham Gooch, who he had previously described as his “perfect summer.”

He remained loyal to England despite being given a trial with the New York Mets, which could have potentially dwarfed his cricket earnings in a time before lucrative central contracts, while still giving his all for Hampshire in the middle of the Tests, winning man-of-the-match awards in two Lord’s finals.

But this was an England side in transition. At the conclusion of the 1992 summer, which also served as Lamb, David Gower, and Ian Botham’s last hurrah, Coach Micky Stewart left, who Smith adored and would later refer to as “my second father.”

Due to a turbulence in the calendar, Smith was 36 Tests and more than four years into his England career before taking the field for a Test on the continent. He had learned to bat on hard, bouncy tracks in South Africa.

It became a perception that Smith struggled against high-class spin bowling, and in 1993, after averaging only 24 in India before being dismissed seven times in 10 innings by either Shane Warne or Tim May in the Ashes, that perception became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Smith underwent surgery following that summer to repair his nagging shoulder injury that had caused him to lose his “ball-like” throw from the boundary. Neither Stewart’s replacement Keith Fletcher nor Ray Illingworth’s new chairman of selectors were successful.

Smith had been a guaranteed pick for years, but Fletcher’s public criticism of his off-field prowess, including a company that made cricket equipment, had suddenly taken him out of the spotlight.

South Africa by now had been readmitted to international cricket, and Smith was hugely disappointed to be dropped for the first home series against the country of his birth – and then omitted for the 1994-95 Ashes.

Smith was recalled against the West Indies in 1995, which included a cheekbone fracturing by Ian Bishop and a tour ticket to South Africa that winter, but he continued to feel publicly underwhelmed by Illingworth, who was now serving as coach following Fletcher’s dismissal.

Smith continued to play for Hampshire between 1998 and 2002, beginning with a modest reluctance, while imagining an untimely England recall.

He later revealed in his 2019 book about the demons he faced in retirement, explaining how his cricketing self and private self deviated, and was told he would not be offered another Hampshire contract at the end of 2003.

“The Judge was a fearless warrior, Robin Arnold Smith was a frantic worrier”, he wrote.

He battled alcohol problems, the break-up of his marriage, and his brother who had moved there after moving to Perth, Western Australia.

However, Robin Smith’s warm response to his book and the struggles he confessed only strengthened how fondly he will always be remembered.

He wrote: “I wasn’t one of the all-time greats, but if people remember me as a good player of raw pace bowling then I’m chuffed with that because it’s something I worked so hard on”.