It was easy to overlook, in the week following a General Election, when he made his cricket debut at a Lord’s Test in which James Anderson bowed out of the international game and his Surrey teammate Gus Atkinson took 12 wickets on debut.
Precocious: Jamie Smith, former Whitgift pupil, is impressing for England
But Jamie Smith, England’s new wicketkeeper-batsman, won’t be overlooked for long.
Smith’s call-up has been hailed as “the missing piece of BazBall” and after just his first senior international innings, he has been described as world-class by no less a judge than Joe Root.
Smith is the fourth former pupil of Whitgift School in South Croydon in recent years to have graduated into the professional ranks at The Oval and then into the England side.
He follows Rory Burns, now captaining Surrey, T20 World Cup-winner Jason Roy and Dom Sibley, who have learned their craft under former Surrey cricketers David Ward and Neil Kendrick on the immaculately maintained lawns and cricket squares of the former Haling Manor and gone on to play for their country.
And according those in the know, Smith could be in and around the England dressing room for some time to come.
He celebrated his 24th birthday last week, while making his Test debut at HQ.
Precocious doesn’t even start to cover it.
Epsom-born Smith was called into Whitgift’s first XI when 13-year-old schoolboy – four or five years younger than most of the players he was up against. By that time, he’d already played for Surrey’s under-17s, aged just 12.
He made his Surrey debut a week before his 18th birthday in a T20 against Middlesex at Lord’s. In the 2022-2023 winter, when aged 22, he struck the fastest hundred by a Lions – England’s developmental B team – batter in a four-day match, with a 71-ball effort against Sri Lanka in Galle.
This week, one of his former teachers at Whitgift recalled, “Jamie Smith was in my class. He was quiet and very polite. I remember David Ward coming up to me and saying, ‘He could be among the very best we’ve ever seen’.”
Smith is playing for England today, on the second day of the second Test against the WEst Indies at Trent Bridge.
Smith has been called up to be England’s gloveman to replace Jonny Bairstow, once a pivotal piece of the set-up under skipper Ben Stokes, and Surrey’s No1 keeper, Ben Foakes.
Smith bats No4 for Surrey, and it is his forceful batting that has also seen him included this week in England’s T20 squad, where Joss Buttler is the captain and, until now, the wicketkeeper.
Smashing time: Smith hit 70 on debt at Lord’s, impressing even the blazers in the pavilion
The Surrey player had a decent enough Test debut with the gloves at Lord’s and scored a forceful 70, which drew plenty of “ooohs” and “aaahs” from the blazers with the egg and tomato ties sitting in the member’s Pavilion.
Yesterday’s second Test first innings provided a cameo in two balls faced by Smith to demonstrate his awesome strengths, and his inexperience or naivety. With one ball, just short of a length, he pulled it effortlessly into the stands to reach 36. The next ball, he tried to repeat the score, only to send the ball into the grateful hands of a West Indies fielder.
Test skipper Stokes has said of Smith that he “fits in perfectly with everything we want”.
And that is a competent wicketkeeper who when batting can keep the scoreboard clicking over while farming the strike from the tail-enders – something Bairstow used to do reliably, while being too accident-prone when keeping, and something which outstanding ‘keeper Foakes was not able to do with the bat.
“If you look at Jamie over the last couple of seasons, he’s been incredibly impressive,” Stokes said. “The weight of runs, but also the way in which he’s scored them. We’re very, very excited by what Jamie can offer us.”
Smith scored a century and 70 for Surrey in the week of his England call-up. “It shows a lot about his character at such a young age, which is a great thing to be able to have, especially when you’re about to take the step to the next level,” Stokes said.
Smith’s Test debut 70 included two massive sixes, as he was running out of batting partners. “I thought it was world-class,” Root said. “The way he managed his innings as well, he got himself into it, and then to be able to shift straight through the gears and apply the pressure, which was one of the reasons he was selected.”
Root says that Smith’s reputation will quickly grow among other sides: “There’ll be, as he walks out to bat, that fear in the opposition now, that he has the ability to really take the game away and make it very difficult to close an innings out.”
Following his debut, Smith said: “I’ve always worked towards playing for England, so I’m just taking it all in. I’ve loved it so far, it is the most amazing feeling having the backing of all the team to go out there and perform.
“It’s a very welcoming environment and I feel like I play my best when I’m relaxed, so it’s perfect.”
From the archive: Click here to listen to another former England cricketer, Mark Butcher, in our Under The Flyover podcast from 2019
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Debates around whether to pick the best wicket keeper/batsman, or the best batsman/wicket keeper have raged probably from the first time a team was selected. In the 90s it was Stewart v Russell, later it was Prior v Jones. No one will care so long as England wins, if they don’t Smith will come in for criticism as the wicket keeper’s position is so important. 1 and a half test in and no wicket keeping errors and some good scores. As I’m writing this England are 195 in the lead so Smith could either come in needing to help build a winning lead, or hammer the nail in the coffin.