Neil Michael Knight Smith (born 27 July 1967) is a former English

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

er who played in seven One Day Internationals from 1986 to 1996. He then went on to work at Warwick School for boys, Myton Road, Warwick as the Groundsman but has recently semi retired. He is the son of the former England

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captain, M J K Smith. Smith was part of a successful Warwickshire side which won the

County Championship The County Championship (referred to as the LV= Insurance County Championship for sponsorship reasons) is the domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales and is organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). It bec ...

under the captaincy of Dermot Reeve in successive seasons in

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and

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. Smith was particularly valuable in one-day cricket, and helped Warwickshire to win the

NatWest Trophy The Friends Provident Trophy was a one-day cricket competition in the United Kingdom. It was one of the four tournaments in which the eighteen first-class counties competed each season. They were joined by teams from Scotland and Ireland. La ...

in 1989, hitting

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for a

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in a tense last-over climax in the final. Warwickshire and Smith also won the

in 1993 and 1995, the

Benson and Hedges Cup The Benson & Hedges Cup was a one-day cricket competition for first-class counties in England and Wales that was held from 1972 to 2002, one of cricket's longest sponsorship deals. It was the third major one-day competition established in Engla ...

in 1995, and the Sunday League in 1994 and 1997, the latter when Smith was captain (following his father as Warwickshire captain) and top run-scorer. The highlight of his brief international career comprised his mixed experiences during a match against the

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during the

1996 Cricket World Cup The 1996 Cricket World Cup, also called the Wills World Cup 1996 after the Wills Navy Cut brand produced by tournament sponsor ITC, was the sixth Cricket World Cup organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC). It was the second World C ...

. He won the

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award in this fixture, one of only two that England won in a miserable world cup campaign, although he was also forced to retire ill after

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while batting. He also opened the batting in the following fixture against

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and made his highest

one-day international A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, currently 50, with the game lasting up to 9 hours. The Cricket World Cup ...

score of 31, but his international career ended a few months later.

References

1967 births Living people England One Day International cricketers English cricketers Warwickshire cricketers Warwickshire cricket captains Shropshire cricketers {{England-cricket-bio-1960s-stub