Colin Smith is confident of one result when Scotland play their last ever National League game against Surrey at the Oval today: a sale. Jonathan Batty, the Surrey wicketkeeper, will be the latest to be persuaded to buy into his Scotland counterpart’s invention, a fielding aid tagged the Katchet. Smith’s direct access has already seen Geraint Jones, the Kent and England wicketkeeper, and John Buchanan, the Australian coach, among his early customers. An unfair advantage? With the dues he has paid cricket, the game owes Smith something.
May 2003 and Smith was awaiting Scotland’s first game in the National League at Durham knowing it has already come too late for him. He had hit 30 and with only part-time work as a postman was struggling to deliver enough financial support to his young family. Back then, meeting him in Aberdeen, he feared whether he would last the season with Scotland but, as it has transpired, Smith has been a central figure in all three. A move to Grampian police has eased those money worries, his only concern now whether a job lot of Katchets will sell enough to justify a sizable investment in patenting their design and manufacturing them in China. The device, marketed by Neil MacRae, his Aberdeenshire colleague, is an angled ramp with a corrugated surface which mirrors the random deflections off either the pitch or the batsman’s edge. It is a gamble, but Smith is backing himself, just as he always has done as a player.
“Every time we play someone now I try to speak to either the coach or the wicketkeeper about it, just to say, ‘What do you think of this?’, and just looking at it they can immediately see the potential of the Katchet,” says Smith. “I’d hope and expect to make money from it, but it depends what happens. At the moment I’ve lost money on it with the initial costs so there’s a risk involved. Nobody who’s used it has come back to me, though, and said, ‘Nah, it’s rubbish’, they’ve all said it’s useful and it means a lot when that comes from top players and coaches. Australia took two off me when I spoke to them when they visited the Grange, Geraint Jones bought a couple which he used before the last two Test matches, while Trevor Penney, who’s now the England fielding coach, has also made an order.”
If only this recognition for his inventing talents had been replicated earlier in life when it came to his cricket. Smith sacrificed much of his twenties for the game, holding out for professionalism within the Scottish game that even today he now accepts is “probably a decade away unless things drastically change”. What the National League has done these past three years, however, is prove him right about his ability. “It does show that if you put the effort in, you get something out of it eventually,” he sighs. In 2007, Smith is likely to finish his career playing at a World Cup with the Scots having qualified through winning the ICC Trophy in the summer past. He has got there in the end, even if the work he has put in has been free labour.
“How I’ve performed personally in the National League these past three seasons has given me a lot of satisfaction,” says Smith. “I had trials down south with quite a few counties in my younger days, but never got a contract. The closest I came was Sussex, I went down there and played a four-day game in which I top-scored and kept really well. At the time they had an Irish keeper in the first team who I didn’t think was much good and they didn’t either because I believe they were releasing him. I must admit, I thought, ‘that’s it, I’m in here’, but after I went up to Aberdeen I was never asked back. What I didn’t know then, but I do now, was that they had a young keeper by the name of Matt Prior already in the ranks, so while I was disappointed I can rationalise it now. It wasn’t just me, it was because of the calibre of players they already had. Prior is in the England touring squad for Pakistan.
That it didn’t happen for me was a lot about timing, if I’d gone the year before and it was me against the Irish keeper, well, I might have won that one.
“I’ve had a lot of genuine compliments from umpires about my keeping and it demonstrates to me that maybe I was good enough to have played at that level. As regards batting, I’m not a naturally confident person and it took longer to really feel I was good enough. A lot of the Saltires players have that problem still: they struggle to believe in themselves and question whether they’ve even got a right to be there when they’ve no reason to feel that way. I ’m now a policeman first and a cricketer second. There’s no doubt that I’m more relaxed about my cricket now I’m not relying on it for my income; it’s become a recreation for me again. I still take it seriously, but some of the additional pressures are gone. I’m sure if you ask Craig (Wright, the Scotland captain), he’d tell you he’s seen a change in me.”
Only during the G8 summit did Smith have cause for any regret, police commitments limited him to one group game and the final of the ICC Trophy. “It was just bad timing. I don’t think anybody could have anticipated the pressures placed on the force by G8,” he shrugs. Smith would advise any teenage Scot, and there are four in today’s squad, to accept a county contract if it is offered. With full one-day international status, Scotland can call players up for ICC matches. “Scottish cricket doesn’t generate enough income to merit a full-time set-up,” adds Smith, “only part-time. Some of the younger guys can afford to call themselves ‘just cricketers’ up here, but they should be encouraged to head south because in the end that best serves Scotland’s interests.”
Scotland have won only twice in this their last National League season, though amateur status has often deprived them of being able to put a full side out because of players’ competing commitments. “There have been some long journeys back these past three years after taking a few thrashings, but the National League has still been a massive thing for Scottish cricket because it’s put us ahead of our ICC peers,” argues Smith. “It was so important we bit the bullet three years ago.We were so at ease in Ireland because we didn’t feel the tension we had done in Canada the time previously and that’s because we’d faced pressure situations all the time in the National League.”
Smith will be sorry to see it go. And not just because it provides him with so much in the way of potential new clientele.
