Summer Sports - Cricket
Ed Smith played cricket for England three times, before a freak ankle injury cut short a promising career.
The former Kent and Middlesex opener has now carved out a successful career in the media, and has also written three books, the latest of which, Luck, hit the bookshops this April.
Here, Ed talks about how his career was formulated on the wickets of Tonbridge School, bemoans the lack of sportsfields in the state school system and suggests that a rethink is in order by the Government
M
any a groundsman would argue that ‘luck’ or good fortune rarely plays a role in the successful preparation of a playing surface. The same
could be said for elite sportsmen, where reaching the top seems largely more the result of hard work and toil than chance. This idea of ‘luck’ has been on the tips of some influential tongues lately. In May, Education Secretary. Michael Gove. delivered a speech to Brighton College students about the virtues of equal opportunities in education. In it, he quoted extracts from a new book by a former England cricketer who has been wrestling with how
opportunities that opened up early in his life shaped his career, and continue to influence how young people fulfil their potential (or not) today. In the intriguingly-titled ‘Luck’, Ed Smith, the Tonbridge School-educated, former England international turned national newspaper journalist and radio broadcaster, highlights the disparity between the state and private sectors in generating first-class athletes, and draws on his own experience of growing up with a school cricketing surface that was,
in his belief, second only in the world to Lord’s.
A glowing verdict delivered on the maintenance prowess of the Kent independent educational establishment, but the impact of that premier quality provision, on nurturing Smith’s innate talent and channelling his devotion to cricket, he is now exploring through print. Twenty-five years ago, of the thirteen players who represented England on a tour of Pakistan, only one had attended a private school. In contrast, today, over two-thirds of the current team are privately educated. “You’re twenty times more likely to go on and play for England if you go to a private rather than a state school,” Smith records. The composition of the England rugby union team and the British Olympic squad reveals a similar trend. Of those members of England’s XV born in that country, more than half were privately educated. Meanwhile, half the UK’s gold medallists at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 were privately educated, compared with just seven percent of the population. For Gove to draw so heavily on Ed Smith’s own findings may speak volumes
62 PC JUNE/JULY 2012
The Luck of the draw?
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