The SPIN interview: Ed Smith
The captain of Middlesex says he feels fitter than ever and can’t wait for the new season; the county have a new management and fitness regime that he believes will help them build on the surge in form that, last season, saw them promoted to division 1 of the one-day league. He averaged 57 himself in the championship last year and says, with great conviction, that he would love another go at Test cricket.
And that would, pretty much, be that for most cricketing interviewees. But for Ed Smith, these statements of enthusiasm and intent, though fiercely sincere, feel like less than half the story. Still only 30, his third book hits the high-street shops just as he gets into the swing of pre-season training at Lord’s. Many sportsmen favour dealing with the media monosyllabically, while wearing a sponsored tracksuit; Smith would appear to be from another world. Old school and public school, he strides, mildly imperious, into an airy Notting Hill restaurant where everyone knows his name, wearing a rather nice suit and ready to engage enthusiastically with anything SPIN can throw at him.
While Smith’s first two books – one about his time training with the New York Mets baseball team, the other a diary of the 2003 season – were well received, he and his publishers have high hopes that the new one, What Sport Tells Us About Life, will be a genuine mainstream hit. In a brisk, highly entertaining look at some of the cliches surrounding modern sport, Smith draws on a broad array of sources – the history of sport, academic research, conversations with film directors – to illuminate simple pub debates on sport. Does money guarantee success? Was amateurism all bad? Will there ever be another Bradman? Is there such a thing as luck? That sort of thing. He wears his learning lightly. If you like sport, you’ll read it in one go.
“All the 15 chapters are very felt,” he says, keen to dispel any idea that the book is some kind of academic exercise. “It took me three years to write and they all started from subjects that were very, very important to me. None of them was easy. The spur was a lifetime of thinking about them. I’m using academic tools and economic tools – or even evolutionary biology in one case – but it’s very felt. Which I hope will make it last. I don’t want to catch the moment; I want to do something that will last.”
What Sport Tells Us About Life gets to grip with familiar cliches with a bright articulacy that is a million miles from the banal talk of “110 per cent” and “winning ways” that fills the back pages. Is it, really, one long pop at how shallow the sporting media is?
“I wouldn’t say it’s a pop at the media at all,” says Smith, carefully. “But I am trying to peer behind things a little bit. I’m interested in taking a subject that a lot of people have a certain view on, and interrogating it. A lot of the book is saying: we don’t need to argue about these issues any longer. Professionalism-v-amateurism, for example, shouldn’t be a debate now: the debate now is ‘Are you good at making people win?’ Not, ‘Are we all wearing the same tracksuit and turning in up at the same time every day?’ That was 1965. No-one is drinking gin and tonic before the start of play these days. We don’t need to flog that straw man. Move on.
“If you can combine the discipline of professionalism with the not worrying about bonuses and contracts that it brings, that’s ideal. Kevin Pietersen works fantastically hard – but I don’t think he frets, which is the good bit of amateurism. The best professional sportsmen manage to connect with the child in them that just loves playing. That’s not to do with not caring – it’s to do with moving beyond anxiety…”
And we’re off. Thing is, there are so many intriguing tangents in Smith’s book that the debates they inspire could fill most of the pages in this magazine and we wouldn’t get to hear too much about the man himself. He wouldn’t mind that, as it happens. But, in 21st Century English cricket, a fellow who has reviewed novels for the Telegraph since he was at Cambridge and who found studying Wagner a pleasure not a chore is, clearly, a man apart.
The retirement of Smith’s friend Alex Loudon at 27 last year, while still on the brink of England honours, showed that those with options can sometimes, simply, take them. But Smith paints himself as ferociously ambitious within cricket – for himself and for his team. “Writing is a big part of my life, but I’ve got this book off my chest and now I just want to play and win. I’ve never felt this unburdened and free and hopeful in my career. You never know whether that’s going to translate. But I certainly feel I want to get out there and I’ve got a lot of unfinished business.”
You want to play for England again…
“Definitely. It’s a massive part of my ambition. Winning with Middlesex is what gets me out of bed and what I spend most of my time thinking about. But if we do well and things go well for me, I’d love to set the record straight with England.
“Last year was the best I’ve played – better than the year I played for England, because I was under more pressure. The team needed runs and I found form that coincided with when we were rocky. I feel that when it gets really ugly for the team I tend to play better. Which leaves me more hungry and optimistic than I’ve ever been as a player.”
Smith is obviously thinking deeply about his role as Middlesex skipper, some of it related to issues discussed in the book. He raves about his opening bowlers Alan Richardson and Chris Silverwood and about Luke Woodhouse, Middlesex’s new fitness coach. He sticks up for the intensity of the county game, while accepting its format may need looking at. Smith is – of course – far too smart to be drawn into comparing himself to a previous ex-Cambridge/Middlesex captain with a taste for the highbrow, a man still regarded as the greatest captain club and country ever had. But he does equate the pair’s respective tasks.
“The interesting thing about Mike Brearley is that he took over in 1971 at Middlesex and they won the championship in ’76 – then had that fantastic period of success. One of the things he did was to develop a new culture. But in those days, he didn’t have all the support that people have now: the first-team coach, fitness coach, second-team coach and so on – so I’d like to think we can do it all a bit quicker! But to have lasting success, you’re not just going to walk in there, snap your fingers, tell a couple of jokes and say, ‘Believe in yourself lads’. It’s not going to happen like that.”
Until now, Smith’s cricketing peak came in the summer of 2003. Then, playing for Kent, he hit five centuries in six innings, making himself unignorable for England selection. He came in for three Tests against South Africa, did okay and was never picked again. How does he look back on that golden interlude?
“I did enjoy it very much… but I feel I played on some bad wickets and, being honest, had some bad luck. And I only got five innings. I would never judge a player at Middlesex on five innings, particularly if he’d shown at some stages that he was quite at home. But then I was out. And for a few years it ate away at me. No question. I felt I deserved to play for England more and I felt I would have done well. There’s still time.”
If 2003 was a giddy peak, the following summer represented a career low: as stand-in captain at Kent, Smith suffered an on-field ‘mutiny’ from senior players that led to him decamping to Middlesex asap. While most sportsmen might get terse when asked to dwell on old failings, Smith deals with the subject breezily and articulately, in the manner of a skilled politician.
“Well, it’s a matter of fact,” he says. “There was one game I stood in for and it was a pretty tricky time for the club in lots of ways. A few things came to a head. I wouldn’t say that, for me as a captain, that was a learning experience because it was so short. But I do think that the more things that go wrong… I’m a massive believer in resilience: being able to absorb disappointments can only help you.”
Smith’s critics have sometimes wondered if his highbrow interests might make him inevitably out of step with a modern dressing room. In On and Off The Field, Smith suggests a theatre trip to Kent team-mates and receives only a stony silence in return – until he reveals he has front row tickets and that posh-totty Bond girl Rosamund Pike would be appearing naked. Any notion that being an intellectual does not fit with being a pro sportsman obviously frustrates Smith. It’s one way that his apparent advantages – of education and, possibly, class – can be turned against him; and one of the reasons why, in his early 20s, he so enjoyed spending his autumns in New York. Over there, he says, he wasn’t ‘the Cambridge guy’. “One thing I loved about it was that no-one asked me where I went to school or university,” he says. “And in a funny kind of way I feel myself to be completely classless. I acknowledge I was lucky: my dad was a teacher and I went to a good university. But class is an irrelevance. I don’t think we live in a classless society but for me and my aspirations, it’s irrelevant. And in America – for all its gradations – it wasn’t about class.
“Part of what I enjoyed about America was something Nick Hornby said: you don’t have to take sides there – you could love sport and music and books all at once. But I think we’re getting there in England now.”
Anyone who still harbours any thoughts of Smith as a dabbler may like to consider that it’s not just the literary achievements that make him stand out from his fellow pros: it’s the fact that, growing up, he was – unlike the vast majority of professional players – a fan of watching the game.
“I was an obsessive fan of Kent,” he says. “My big early cricketing memories were seeing Kent lose Lord’s finals to Middlesex in ’84 and ’86. Middlesex won off the last ball both times. I cared, I really followed it; I really wanted Kent and England to do well. My sister was a big fan too: it was something we did as a family, something I’m very grateful for.
“It wasn’t just watching. One of the things I love is that I can almost recreate players I never saw because I’ve heard so much about them. I can almost see Peter May or Barry Richards – even though I’ve never seen one ball. We have a laugh about this in the dressing room at Lord’s. The young lads will see names on the honours board and ask me who they were and I’ll tell them. It’s a bit of a laugh. When we’re really bored.”
By now, it’s clear that Smith could talk for England. As we part, we return to the prospects of his playing cricket for England and he adds a suitably elegant caveat to his earlier come-and-get-me-plea.
“We’ve had a chat about my book here and I’ve said I’ve love to play for England. I’d be silly if I didn’t. But to engineer opportunities to constantly push my corner… I don’t want to do that. I couldn’t live with myself. Fulfilling your ambitions is one thing. But it’s not as important as living with dignity…”
Thanks to Hereford Road restaurant, W2. What Sport Tells Us About Life by Ed Smith is published by Viking at £14.99 and in shops now.
Smith in brief
April 1996 Aged 19, hits 101 on debut for Cambridge University v Glamorgan.
July 1997 Debut for Kent.
2002 Publishes Playing Hard Ball, reflecting on his experiences training with NY Mets baseball team.
July 2003 Run of five centuries in six innings earns England call-up.
August 2003 Hits 64 on debut v S Africa. Follows it up with two ducks. Dropped, averaging 17.40, after three Tests.
2004 Releases On and Off the Field.
2004 As stand-in skipper for Kent, suffers on-field ‘mutiny’ from senior players. Moves to Middlesex for 2005.
2007 Appointed captain. Enjoys best season with the bat, averaging 58.04. Only four England-qualified batters do better. Leads Middlesex to promotion from Pro40 Division Two.
