Edwin Smith was a Derbyshire off-spin bowler who played county cricket for twenty years, took more than 1,200 wickets, and spent his entire career in the service of a single club that rarely won much but produced cricketers who knew exactly what they were doing. He died in July 2026 at the age of 92, and Derbyshire County Cricket Club, in its tribute, called him one of the county's finest cricketers.
In a team that competed rather than dominated, the assessment was not offered lightly. He was born on 2 January 1934 in Grassmoor, a village in the north Derbyshire coalfields between Chesterfield and Clay Cross.