Test debut: 17 August 1946 Last Test: 21 March 1947 Source: [1] Thomas Peter Bromley Smith, born October 30, 1908 and died August 4, 1967, was a cricketer who played for Essex and England. Smith was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1947.
Smith was a leg-break and googly bowler with better control of line and length than many of his type, and, as a batsman, a lower order hitter of some style. He holds the Essex records both for the number of wickets in a season (172 in 1947) and for wickets in a career (1,610 between 1929 and 1951).
But perhaps his most famous feat was as a batsman. Playing for Essex against Derbyshire at Chesterfield in 1947, he batted at number eleven, and came to the wicket with Essex 199 for 9 wickets. In two-and-a-half hours, Smith hit 163 runs, putting on 218 for the last wicket with Frank Vigar, who made an undefeated 114. The 163 is the world record score for a number eleven batsman, and the partnership is one of only 11 of more than 200 runs for the last wicket in the whole of first-class cricket. In that season of 1947, Smith achieved the cricketer's "double" of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets.
Smith played only four Test matches for England: one in 1946 against India and three more on the tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1946/47 led by Wally Hammond. As a Test player, he was only modestly successful, but in taking nine wickets for 121 runs for MCC against New South Wales he set the record for the best bowling return by an Englishman in Australia.
Smith was the victim of one of the crueller episodes in cricket. He turned up at The Oval for the 1933 Test match against the West Indies, only to find that the telegram he had received was a hoax. It was another 13 years before he was really selected for his country.
He took only three wickets in his four Tests but achieved his own brand of fame as the last player with a moustache to be capped by England until Graham Gooch in 1975.