On and Off the Field - Ed Smith

A life on the inside

If you think that Ed Smith takes himself a bit seriously, this book isn't going to change your view. "I hate to name-drop, but this book was Steve Waugh's idea," it begins, without any obvious irony. Unlike Waugh, that prolific diarist, Smith started his year-in-the-life as a county cricketer with an unexceptional past and an uncertain future. Penguin, Smith admits, took a gamble on him. What, you may wonder, is this privileged youth's insight worth? What can he bring, so to speak, to the party?

To begin with, Smith cares enough about language and literature to ensure that his diary, which stretches from November 2002 to November 2003, is far more expressive than the sport's usual fare. Most sports fans read biographies for the personality involved. They want to know what that four-times world champion jumper/wrestler/tiddlywinker thinks, feels and understands about life. That's why sports biographies are so often disappointing. You soon find that the champ has poured so much of their life into their sport that a) their life isn't that interesting after all and b) they haven't had much time to think about it either.

Smith's achievements are modest but achievement is not this book's engine room. This is a diary that shares the daily experience of the sportsman with eye-widening psychological candour. Others may talk about cricket from a place of greater authority, but few have captured the player's inner life with more eloquence or honesty. "The writer in me doesn't stop asking why or hold back from uncomfortable truths," Smith writes early on. "The cricketer in me understands the power of denial."

He excels at describing what takes place at the crease. Batting is "a battle between two competing voices, one weak, the other strong. Your weak voice tells you one of your team-mates will get runs if you don't ... your weak voice says that you have always found this bowler hard and that doesn't mean you're a bad player, just unlucky." It is to his credit that his own internal conversations are interesting enough to sustain the book. It's not only self-analysis that he's good at. His profile of Nasser Hussain, observed on and off the field during the Headingley Test against South Africa, is as close as any seasoned commentator has come to fathoming him in a 14-year career. Smith paints him as a 19th century solo explorer on a "tortured journey of self-discovery". "Can't live with the bloody mountains, can't live without them - that's not far off his view of cricket."

Nor is this merely a psychology textbook. It's also an engaging and surprisingly gripping account of Kent's rocky season and Smith's personal voyage to Test selection. He has interesting tales to tell of team bonding sessions, onfield rivalries and England ice baths. I wouldn't say Smith was a natural born comedian, and at times he can seem a bit of a cold fish, but there are glimpses of a less stiff-collared being in his descriptions of his family and encounters with his team-mates. My favourite is his squirming embarrassment when he visits Dave Fulton the day after his eye operation and can't stop saying the wrong thing ("I manage two `perspectives' and one `blinding'.")

Any flaws? Well, he can be cringingly disingenuous; like all cricketers, he claims not to be interested in statistics, until there's one that he'd like to let you know about. But that's an understandable, even forgiveable, transgression when you're hoping that the selectors who are encountering you in print will soon be calling your number. And despite that, On and Off the Field is still the most searching of its genre, to the point where it surpasses even Mike Atherton's enlightening autobiography. Smith's playing career is unlikely to reach Atherton's heights; but his 2003 season was certainly an intriguing one to chronicle. Which leaves you wondering - is it a coincidence that the year he kept a rigorous journal of self-improvement was the best year of his cricketing life?