Ed Smith doesn’t look as if he goes around punching the air much, at least not in public. But then, England’s national selector doesn’t really resemble an England selector either, traditionally the home of the florid, blazered eminence. Smith tends to look as if he’s stopped off briefly on a motoring tour of 1930s Tuscany, or like James Joyce has unaccountably been offered a job as senior vice-president at Morgan Stanley.
New things, new people, new methods. Smith has also been the object of some ambient chuntering during these last few weeks of Ashes cricket. This is a chief selector whose picks have been bold at times, hard to decipher at others, and which will be marked now by a series during which England have failed to regain the Ashes urn.
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