Judge leaves his court

Man of the match Robin Smith celebrates with his Hampshire captain Mark Nicholas (right) after the county beat Kent by 41 runs in the Benson and Hedges Cup final at Lord’s on July 12, 1992. Pics/Getty Images

These are sad times. For English cricket in particular, and I'm not referring to the shellacking at Perth courtesy Australian opener Travis Head's near-unbelievable fourth innings century.

In late November, the wife of late England batsman Graham Thorpe opened up in an interview with Talksport, saying her husband would have been alive had the England and Wales Cricket Board offered him more support before he took his own life in August 2024. The left-handed batsman was relieved of his services as England's batting coach in 2022, after which he battled depression.

On Tuesday, news came through that England had lost another batting stalwart - Robin Smith - who played alongside Thorpe in 17 Tests and 10 one-day internationals.

Like Thorpe, South African-born Smith, whose cause of death has yet to be released, struggled with mental health issues. Smith was open about it in his 2019 book, The Judge - More Than Just a Game. He was known as Judge to mates because his curly hair resembled a wig that judges wear.

The book's Prologue dwells on what a wreck he was in 2013 after losing "my marriage, my home, my children, not to mention my identity, money, dignity, direction, purpose and hope." Towards its end, there is a chapter titled Reinvention. Smith was transformed and said he enjoyed coaching even those days when sessions stretched to seven hours in 37-degree heat at Perth. However, his father's death caused him to fall back into old patterns.

From an interview done by Simon Wilde, The Times' cricket correspondent and ex-England fast bowler Gladstone Small's Facebook account, we learnt that Smith caught up with his former England teammates in Perth a few days before his death - Graham Gooch, David Gower, Allan Lamb, and Small himself; also, commentator Mark Nicholas, his captain at Hampshire. Smith spoke to Wilde about how England Lions head coach Andrew Flintoff invited him to chat with the young guns and he reluctantly obliged. It reminded me of the late Terry Jenner reluctantly making it through the main gates of the Adelaide Oval to be interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in the summer of 1992-93 as Shane Warne's spin guru. Smith was hesitant because he wondered whether the England Lions would remember him. Jenner's reluctance was based on being ashamed since he served a prison sentence for embezzlement. Warne, incidentally, was a mate of Smith's. The late spin legend was one of the Foreword writers (Nicholas was the other) for Smith's book. Warne revealed that they first met each other when Smith was part of the England squad for the 1990-91 Ashes tour. Warne, who was with the Australian Cricket Academy, had been approached to recommend some places where Smith and Lamb could spend their late evenings. Nine years later, Warne signed for Hampshire, where Smith was captain. They found themselves at opposite ends in the 1993 Ashes, and Warne dismissed his pal four times in five Tests. Warne didn't believe Smith was a bad player of spin, and Smith took pride in his performances against the turning ball, no matter how poorly coaches like Ray Illingworth and Keith Fletcher thought of him as a spin tackler. He didn't have a three-figure innings to show on his 1992-93 Test tour of India. But he scored half-centuries in the Chennai (56 off 89 balls) and Mumbai (62 off 166 balls) Tests. The following month, in the one-off Test against Sri Lanka at Colombo, Smith, as opener, took 128 and 35 off a Sri Lankan attack that included Muttiah Muralitharan and Jayananda Warnaweera. "It was really hard work. That was my best innings against spin, and possibly my best overall in terms of concentration, fitness, and resilience. I didn't play any beautiful square drives or anything like that, as there was no pace in the wicket. In fact, I barely played an attacking stroke. But I hung in there, getting outside the line to Murali whenever I could, and got ugly runs," he wrote in The Judge.

As highlighted in most tributes to Smith, he got three of his nine Test centuries against the West Indies at a time when they were one of the two best teams in the world. Against India in 1990, he helped himself to centuries in consecutive Tests - at Lord's and Old Trafford - averaging 180.50 in that series. Ravi Shastri, who figured in all three Tests of that rubber and also clashed with Smith during his county cricket stint at Glamorgan, told me on Wednesday: "Judge was a terrific player of genuine fast bowling, a point fielder's nightmare. Lovely bloke. Really sad to see him go. God bless his soul." The Australians respected him too, and the selectors may have been mighty pleased when they saw him carve two hundreds against the old enemy in the 1989 Ashes, where nothing much went England's way. Unfortunately for England, Smith could not improve on that Ashes centuries count.

Smith was highly respected by South Africa, his country of birth, but he couldn't come up with a three-figure knock against Hansie Cronje & Co. The fast bowlers were let loose on him, and he responded by smashing spearhead Allan Donald for three fours in four balls in the opening Test of the 1995-96 series at Centurion. Not long after, he was bowled by the burly Brian McMillan for 43. "It's a sad time indeed… too young. He was a great change room fella to have a beer with," former all-rounder Brian McMillan said to me on Tuesday.

Former players are often asked what they miss most about cricket in their post-playing years. Many of those answers will centre around the fact that they miss the camaraderie and being in the company of their teammates. And Smith was particularly fortunate to have met some of them before the eternal judge sentenced him to the great beyond.

mid-day's Deputy Editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance.
He tweets @ClaytonMurzello. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.