Smith Harry Image 3 Gloucestershire 1928

Description

Fishponds, Bristol born wicket-keeper and right-hand batsman born Harry Smith was a reliable wicket-keeper and a batsman good enough to make 1,000 runs in a season five times in the 1920’s. He first played for Gloucestershire in 1912 and took over as regular wicket-keeper from Jack Board in 1914. From then until 1931, he was a regular in the side, often batting at No. 3 in a team perennially reliant for its runs on just a few players.

In 1919 against Hampshire he made hundreds in both innings of the match, scoring 120 and 102 not out, and in 1922 he was in second place in the Gloucestershire averages with 1,183 runs including 131 not out against Essex at Leyton and 109 against Surrey at The Oval.

He played just one Test match for England in the First Test match ever against the West Indies at Lord’s in June 1928. He scored seven runs and took one catch, but made way in the next match for Harry Elliott, who in turn made way for George Duckworth for the Third and final Test.

Smith missed the whole of the 1932 season through illness, prompting Wisden in 1933 to an unusual tribute in its usually emotion-free pages: “Smith’s absence,” it wrote, “meant something more than the loss of a thoroughly dependable wicket-keeper and a batsman capable of getting runs when runs were most needed, because, perhaps unconsciously, his fellow professionals had come to regard him as their father, and, in an unassuming way, he was a source of strength to his captain on the field. His value was equally marked in the dressing room and on the long journeys which continually had to be faced.”

Smith did not appear in first class cricket in 1933 or 1934, but in 1935, Gloucestershire having failed to find an adequate successor as wicket-keeper, he returned for 15 County matches, though he was ill and his batting was negligible. He died little over two years later aged 46 in 1937.

In 402 first class matches he scored 13,413 runs at an average of 22.35 with 10 centuries and 75 half centuries and a highest score of 149. With his gloves he dismissed 457 batsmen caught and stumped another 265.

Smith was also a professional footballer before the First World War. An inside forward, he started his career with Bath City in 1910 and joined Southern League Bristol Rovers in 1912. In April 1913 he signed for First Division Bolton Wanderers and made his Football League debut against Derby County in March 1914. He enjoyed a run of 8 matches in their team before the end of the season, scoring his only goal in a 2-1 defeat at Chelsea the next month, but after that retired to concentrate on his cricket.

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