Heath had a formula: A + H = C which meant Arrogance plus Humility equals Confidence. Robin did not have the arrogance, nor did he need the humility. Paul was the same. Chris had it and, I was often reminded, so did I. Yet Chris and I were the least talented of the four of us. Chris filtered the methods offered by Heath and applied much of his own thinking to a career that surpassed expectation.
It is what you do with talent that counts. Robin was led to believe that practice and training—the 10,000-hours theory—led to success. Heath’s drills and disciplines were valuable during development but less essential in the long term, as the requirements of batting evolved on different pitches and in different circumstances around the world. Heath provided grounding and consistency but, by definition, he imposed limits. The more Robin analysed and was analysed, the more he retreated. The more he knew, the more he feared. As he grew from boy to man, the key to teaching Robin was to encourage him to let go.
I was at the crease in the 1988 Benson & Hedges Cup Final when Chris got out and Robin replaced him. We were chasing Derbyshire’s low total and he asked how best to go about it against Michael Holding, Devon Malcolm, Ole Mortensen and Alan ‘Jack’ Warner. I said, ‘Show off.’ He made 38 from 27 balls, sparkling with a series of back-foot drives and cuts before a freak catch on the boundary by Steven Goldsmith ended the fun. On commentary, Benaud said, ‘The game needed an innings like that.’ Within a fortnight, Robin was picked to play for England against the West Indies.
Lamb was at the non-striker’s end when his South African mate took guard for England at Headingley against Malcolm Marshall. The Judge went through the calisthenics and then the sprints on the spot that became a signature of each of his innings. Obviously tense, he was about to settle into his stance when Lamb called for him. ‘Hey, Judgey, Judgey, come here, my china. Can you see Kath [his wife]? Look, Judgey, she’s there in the wives’ area in the middle of the stand next to the pavilion. See her? . . . Jeeesus, she’s twitching with excitement and completely flushed in the face. See how you do it for her, Judgey . . . Fuck knows what she’ll do next!’ Judge roared with laughter, relaxed his shoulders and arms and worked Marshall off the stumps for a couple of runs through mid wicket. He was away. Good job, Lamby.
I have long thought that the flaw in Robin is that he listens willingly but does not always hear. By the time his Test career ended prematurely in 1996, he was a marginally less good version of exactly the same batsman Lamb met in the middle at Headingley in 1988. Most cricketers change. The nature of the hurdles they face, the opponents who study them and the march of time demand that technique, method and approach become subject to rethinks. Robin had stayed pretty much the same, if understandably scarred by the years of battle. At his best, he was exceptional, but he had fewer gears than others less gifted. This was the reason the England selectors, who could not possibly have understood his complex character and the upbringing that came with it, were to mess him about in the latter half of his career.
Let’s go back to 1981. Robin was immensely strong. The Hampshire coach, Peter Sainsbury, banned him from hitting sixes in practice because we were running out of balls. He rained these hits into back gardens almost a hundred yards away, where increasingly furious residents refused to return the Dukes and Readers they found in their flowerbeds.
This was a kid whose life had been bathed in sport. He was a rugby centre with pace and power, a record-breaking schoolboy sprinter and a batsman with the world at his feet. He was loyal, self-effacing and bloody good value. He hung on the words of his elders and especially loved his old man’s eccentricities.
Once, with moments remaining in a school rugby match, Robin received the ball on the halfway line and began a memorable surge, riding tackles and handing off all comers along the way. When he reached the final 25 he was close to the touchline and somewhat surprised to see John sprinting alongside him. ‘Go, my boy, go!’ screamed John Smith as startled parents hurriedly cleared a path. When Robin threw himself over the line to secure the brilliant winning try for his team, John went with him, flying through the air in his trademark white shorts, white short-sleeved shirt and tweed cap, landing on top of his son in a moment of unparalleled madness.
And so it was, in the privileged environment of African servants, bowling machines loaded by gardeners, private coaches, myriad friends, gorgeous girls and great swathes of love and attention from his delightful parents, that Robin Arnold Smith grew up.
He made his first-class debut on New Year’s Day, 1981, in the B section of the Currie Cup, and first played for Natal in 1982 alongside the incomparable Procter, who had made his own first-class debut in 1965. Robin’s career finished in 2003 alongside James Tomlinson and James Adams, who are still playing for Hampshire today. That is one hell of a wingspan. During this time, he played some innings that were out of this world. His hundred against West Indies at Lord’s is a popular video on YouTube. Another against Australia in Manchester was considered near perfect by Richie Benaud. For all his trials against spin, he made 128 in Colombo against Sri Lanka in 1993 and averaged 63.37 in six Tests against India.
The steel with which Robin applied himself to the game occasionally manifested itself in surprisingly opinionated responses for one so apologetically polite and courteous. Over a weekend before a Test against Sri Lanka, Hampshire played the tourists in a three-day match at Southampton. Unnecessarily, I told him to field at silly point on the off side to Ranjan Madugalle, who was thrashing Raj Maru’s gentle left-arm spinners around Northlands Road. Robin said he’d rather not, given he had a slightly more important event to come for England on Thursday at Lord’s. I said, ‘Hampshire pay your wages, pal, you’ll field where you’re damn well told.’ To which he replied, ‘Who’s your fucking pal, pal?’ Game, set, match to the Judge.
His Test average of 43.67 includes nine hundreds in 62 matches. Robin was a stellar attraction, playing the game in a way that appealed to audiences worldwide. He was a brilliant one-day cricketer too. In the summer of 1993, he scored a breathtaking unbeaten 167 against the Australians in a one-day international at Edgbaston, a match England duly lost. He was used to that. He once made 155 not out for Hampshire against Glamorgan in the Benson & Hedges Cup and lost that game too. There were some muppets alongside him in those days.
Many of his innings for Hampshire stand out, but the two I would pick if pushed were both played in one-day cricket. Against a good attack on a poor pitch at Worcester, in the quarterfinal of the 1988 Benson & Hedges Cup, his unbeaten 87 saw us home by 3 wickets. In the final of the 1991 NatWest Trophy at Lord’s, his 78—run out, if you don’t mind—did much the same. One off drive from Waqar Younis who, as the light was fading, cranked it up in an attempt to win Surrey the game, was truly the stuff of a champion.
In the opening home championship match of the 1990 season against Sussex, Robin put on 256 with David Gower, who was playing his first game for the club. They dovetailed perfectly, finding a synergy that delighted the healthy crowd. It was as if the clock had been wound back to the days of Richards and Greenidge—one elegant and easy, the other at first flexing muscle and stretching sinew before finding an unlikely lightness of being. Freed by the hints of bonhomie that characterised Gower’s play, Robin made 181 alongside David’s 145. For an all too brief period, these two wonderful cricketers floated on the same cloud.
From that first day we saw Robin, it was clear that he intimidated bowlers. He drove the ball supremely well either side of the wicket and cut the thing as if he were a boxer delivering a knockout punch. He could pull and glance and sometimes sweep. His unerring and imposing ability to punish the bad ball was pre-eminent in the English game. He rarely gave his wicket away and, while he was at the crease, any team for which he played had a better than even chance of success. I am certain he won more of the big points for Hampshire than anyone else, including Richards and Greenidge.
As a young man, he thrashed the fast bowlers into the bleachers and frequently launched all but t
he best spinners into space. Age and inevitable disappointment led to the retreat into self-doubt that affects sportsmen who know too much about failure. Having said as much, the opposition celebrated his wicket with transparent relief and joy to the very end. Hugely popular and much admired, there was not a man you would rather have on your side, in the trenches or at the bar. He had time for everyone—to his cost, actually—and everyone had time for him. I believe him to be Hampshire’s greatest ever cricketer and strongly believe that a Robin Smith Stand should honour his name.
At this point of the Robin Smith story, you would not think much could go wrong. But it did.
Wind the clock forward to January 2011 and the living room of a barely furnished apartment in Perth. It was there that the same Robin Smith was found on the floor, curled up and contemplating suicide. This gentle and beautiful man had been dragged into an abyss of alcohol and antidepressants. His life, once secure and bright, was suddenly dark and uncertain.
This story is not as unusual as we might hope. Professional cricket provides a mainly secure life, 24/7. The modern-day professional has his path cleared by numerous support staff, but it was pretty cushy back in the 1980s too. Expenses covered the daily cost of life. Salaries provided enough to pay the bills. There was no financial incentive to a career in cricket, only the burn of ambition and the joy in fulfilment. The family of sport ensured friendship and a common theme. Together you ate every meal, practised, travelled and played before waking up to the morning’s alarm and doing it all again. Back then, you shared a hotel room with a teammate too.
It is a career that takes the best years of your life, often for little reward. At some point in your 30s, 40 if you are lucky, you are all washed up. Alone and frightened, you face a world about which you know next to nothing. You bat, bowl or keep wickets—and for this you are paid a livable wage and often applauded—but god knows, the game offers you little comfort for the next phase in your life.
It is a worryingly well-trodden path: alone, often lonely, frightened. Such trauma leads to a diminished self-worth. There may be a wife to cherish and kids to feed but the pub provides respite. No job. Too soon, no money. Then comes the self-absorption and the retreat. The family notices your moods. So it’s back to the pub. Then the embarrassment, the hiding, depression, sometimes the drugs. Often the alcohol. Sometimes divorce. Alone, frightened. To the bookie, or the tables. Then debt.
It is upon exactly this that the professional cricketers’ associations and the benevolent funds spend most of their time. Call it after-care, because ex-pros need help. Not all of them, not by any means. But it is no coincidence that approximately 140 cricketers of first-class standing have committed suicide.
Back to Chris for a moment. He played eight Tests for England, four of them against Richard Hadlee, between midsummer 1983 and spring 1984. He did all right but not well enough to merit a crack at the West Indies in 1984, about which he was mighty relieved. Kippy loved most bowlers, though not the really fast ones, who tested his nerve and reaction more than he had planned when he came into the job. Hadlee was just about manageable. Holding, Marshall, Garner and Walsh, en masse, were not. He wasn’t scared, just practical about his chances. Chris Broad, Tim Robinson and Graeme Fowler went past him in the affections of the selectors. Gooch was soon to return from the ban. Though neither knew it at the time, Chris Smith and Paul Terry had said goodbye to test cricket by their mid-twenties.
For the remaining five years of his county career, Chris went about his work with typical attention to detail and equally typical outcomes: runs, runs and more runs. He settled in England, married a lovely girl from Gloucestershire and flirted with business projects in the off-season. The sight each summer morning of Kippy and the Judge at the Northlands Road nets, facing up to the bowling machine lovingly loaded by their father was a staple of Hampshire cricket life. John would read out the notes he had taken during the Grayson Heath sessions in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and Robin—more than Chris, whose independence remained a virtue—would crosscheck his game. Their bats would be pockmarked in black, a strange residue from the heavy yellow dimpled balls that were the brothers’ fodder.
If Robin had a daily spring in his step, Chris had a weary, if rather amusing, plod. He played down his own gifts, giving the impression that he would really rather not be there. He once admitted to me that in all those runs was only a reflected glory, and that the physical and mental effort that went into producing them would lead to an early retirement.
He could be very funny. Briefly, having talked him into fielding at slip, we christened him the Claw, because he held on to eleven consecutive catches. Then he dropped an easy one and was so disgusted that he walked out of slip down to third man, where he stayed for the rest of his career. It was the oddest thing, given he had the strongest mind of us all: a mind smart enough to win cricket matches and numerous man-of-the-match medals. It was a mind that was already plotting the future.
In the latter part of the summer of 1991, he dropped the bomb. He was, he told us, retiring with immediate effect from professional cricket and emigrating to Perth, Australia, where he had been appointed commercial director at the Western Australia Cricket Association (WACA). Wow! We urged him to stay until the end of the season but he buggered off all the same, leaving us an opening batsman short for the NatWest Trophy Final at Lord’s. No worries in the end: Tony Middleton stepped up from the 2nd XI, made 78 and we beat Surrey in a thriller—the game where Robin won the bout against Waqar Younis.
With Chris kicking on Down Under, his brother began to visit Perth more often. He had spent a couple of winters playing for the Claremont-Nedlands and South Perth clubs in the mid-1980s after parting company with Natal. Needless to say, he broke the record for the number of runs scored in a season for South Perth in 1987–88, just as he had broken Richards’ record in Durban all those years ago. Nice habit.
By the late 1990s, Chris had become chief executive at the WACA. It is some story: a South African who played for England running a leading Australian state association without a jot of previous experience. Then, when he moved on from the WACA, he set up his own embroidery business, working around the clock to make a handsome return. It is impossible not to admire the sheer resilience and ambition of this savvy and driven man.
After Paul retired from professional cricket in 1996, he too followed the exodus, playing and coaching at Melville Cricket Club, where he was popular and respected. Paul’s family have settled well in Perth and the kids, both in their twenties, have Australian accents. I marvel at the sheer guts of such a move. For a while, he ran a cricket academy for aspiring English county cricketers, but the well ran dry and, in search for work, he took on coaching positions at Hampshire and, more recently, in Bangladesh.
I hardly need tell you that Robin took his family to Perth too, though not without a dip at an afterlife in England, where he was happy in a little village to the west of Southampton as you head for the New Forest. Friends invested in Chase, his cricket bat and equipment company, and Masuri, the cricket helmet brand for which he held the franchise. The raw truth, however, is that Chris was the businessman. Robin left England in a hurry in 2008, taking Kathy and two children, Margaux and Harrison, with him. Rumour had it there were unpaid bills. They are paid now.
Throughout these upheavals, Joy and John were thrown from pillar to post. They owned a flat in Southampton and spent increasing amounts of time away from Durban. John cashed in the leather business, only to see the South African rand weaken against both the sterling and the Australian dollar. They eventually sold up in both Durban and Southampton before setting sail for Perth, where they are content to be alongside the boys and the grandchildren. Having said that, they must look back wistfully. Their journey from La Lucia, with a couple of acres, a pool, a jacuzzi, a dance studio, a fine garden, a cricket net and all the trappings of a white man’s life in Southern Africa, to a one-bedder in South Perth—via a two-bedder in Southampton—almost beggars belief.
By the time Robin hit rock bottom, I was in Sydney for part of the year, working for Channel Nine. Two decades on, the four boys whose lives had collided at Hampshire County Cricket Club in 1981 found themselves entrenched in the Australian way of life.
Three of us were fine. We didn’t know that one was not. Robin was on the booze. He had always loved a drink and at the close of each day’s play, the social hub of friend and foe gathered around him. It was in him to take this to a dangerous limit but, overall, he handled his taste for a beer pretty well. His marriage was a different thing. It was in trouble.
His brother did what he could to help but Robin was beyond help. He hid, ashamed. He pined for the Hampshire dressing room. He ached for the crossing of that white line. For the raising of the bat. For the applause. He hurt for the loss of friendships and a lifestyle that had sustained him over 22 happy and celebrated years. There was more booze and there were more issues at home. Then there were problems with the Masuri business that he had brought with him to Australia. The antidepressants controlled his life. He was free-wheeling to oblivion. Former teammates and colleagues tired of his excesses and feared for his sanity. Phone calls bounced around the ether. The news was that the Judge was struggling for air. Just occasionally, that wonderful and precious smile could be activated but mainly by alcohol. The fact was that a beautiful and much-loved man had become a shadow.
Barry Richards, who had been looking for an investment property in Perth and heard Robin was in need of accommodation, bought a place into which Robin moved. But Robin couldn’t do this alone. So he sank further into the darkness. Which is why, one day, he was found curled up in a corner, shivering and thinking the worst. It is a lesson to us all and to the game, which owes pastoral care to those who have graced it. Thankfully the game has come to understand this. Depression of any sort is no longer taboo.
A Beautiful Game Page 13
