Leslie O'Brien "Chuck" Fleetwood-Smith (30 March 1908 – 16 March 1971) was a cricketer who played for Victoria and Australia. Known universally as "Chuck", he was the "wayward genius" of Australian cricket during the 1930s. A slow bowler who could spin the ball harder and further than his contemporaries, Fleetwood-Smith was regarded as a rare talent, but his cricket suffered from a lack of self-discipline that also characterised his personal life.Cashman, Richard et al. eds. (1996) The Oxford Companion to Australian Cricket, Oxford University Press. p. 197. . In addition, his career coincided with those of Bill O'Reilly and Clarrie Grimmett, two spinners named in the ten inaugural members of the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame; as a result he played only ten Test matches but left a lasting impression with one delivery in particular. His dismissal of Wally Hammond in the fourth Test of the 1936–37 Ashes series has been compared to Shane Warne's ball of the century. He has the unwanted record of conceding the most runs by a bowler in a Test match innings.
Holding little regard for the other disciplines of the game, batting and fielding, he attracted a lot of attention with his rare style of bowling: left-arm wrist spin. Few bowlers of this type have appeared in senior cricket; certainly, Fleetwood-Smith was the first such bowler to influence Australian cricket and play for the Test team.Rediff.com: Long march for the Chinamen. Retrieved 18 November 2007.
Fleetwood-Smith was ambidextrous and could bowl with either arm during his youth. His choice of an unconventional bowling style reflected his reputation as an eccentric.Williams, Ken (2000) For Club and Country, MCC Library. pp. 52–54. . After his playing days finished, Fleetwood-Smith succumbed to alcoholism and spent many years homeless on the streets of Melbourne, sometimes sleeping rough a few hundred metres from the stadium where he played many of his best matches, the Melbourne Cricket Ground. His arrest in 1969 brought attention to his plight and a number of influential people rallied to his cause.
Early years The third child of Fleetwood Smith and his wife Frances (née Swan), Fleetwood-Smith was born at Stawell in the Northern Grampians area of western Victoria.Australian Dictionary of Biography: Fleetwood-Smith, Leslie O'Brien (1908–1971). Retrieved 18 November 2007. The family were well known in the district for their long involvement with the local newspaper, and for Fleetwood Smith's association with the organising committee of the Stawell Gift. The family changed their name from Smith to Fleetwood-Smith around 1914.Growden, p. 17.
During his infancy, Fleetwood-Smith was given the nickname "Chuck", a contraction of the polo term "chukka". After attending primary school in Stawell, he enrolled at Xavier College when the family moved to Melbourne in 1917. In the early 1920s, he was a member of Xavier's powerful First XI, which included the future Test player Leo O'Brien, Joe Plant and Karl Schneider, who played first-class cricket while still at the school, but died of leukaemia at the age of 23.The Age: Retrieved 18 November 2007. The team won the Victorian Public Schools premiership in 1924, but Fleetwood-Smith left the school soon after. It is believed that he was expelled, although the school records are incomplete and do not mention this.Growden, p. 28. Fleetwood-Smith, and fellow Old Xaverians, Leo O'Brien, Stuart King and Joe Plant later represented Victoria v South Australia in a Sheffield Shield match at the MCG in February 1933.
Returning to Stawell, where his family had relocated a year earlier, Fleetwood-Smith completed his education locally and turned out for the Stawell cricket team in the Wimmera league. In three seasons from 1927 to 1928, he captured 317 wickets for Stawell and took seven wickets in a representative match, playing for the Country Colts against the City Colts. He came to the attention of cricket clubs in Melbourne while representing the league in a Country Week tournament.Growden, p. 34. Around this time, his father decided to combine his first and last names, and the family styled themselves as Fleetwood-Smith.Growden, p. 29.
Cricket career
Fleetwood-Smith moved to Melbourne to play with St Kilda in the district cricket competition for the 1930–31 season. It was a challenging choice for a young bowler as the team possessed an outstanding spin attack—Test bowlers Bert Ironmonger and Don Blackie were members of the club. He became a regular in the club's First XI during his second season and in one match claimed 16 wickets for 82 runs (16/82) against Carlton, prompting his selection for the Victorian second team.Coleman, pp. 443–439. The remainder of the summer was meteoric for Fleetwood-Smith. He made his first-class debut against Tasmania and captured ten wickets; in his first international against the touring South Africans he returned 6/80 in the first innings; and on his Sheffield Shield debut, he took 11 wickets for the match against South Australia.Coleman, p. 393. He led the first-class bowling averages for Victoria and capped the season by playing in St Kilda's premiership team.Growden, pp. 42–47. In the winter of 1932, Fleetwood-Smith joined a private tour of the United States and Canada, organised by the former Test spin bowler Arthur Mailey. Playing 51 matches, he totalled 249 wickets at an average of less than eight runs each as his unique style bewildered the local batsmen.
On the fringe of the Test team This rapid rise made Fleetwood-Smith a prospect for the Test team in 1932–33 when England toured and played the famous Bodyline series. However, in Ironmonger, Bill O'Reilly and Clarrie Grimmett, the Australian team possessed a strong spin bowling attack and Fleetwood-Smith needed to supplant one of the trio to gain selection. Although he took 50 first-class wickets for the season (at 21.90 average, including 9/36 in an innings against Tasmania),Cricket Archive: First-class bowling by Chuck Fleetwood-Smith. Retrieved 20 November 2007. his bowling received rough treatment from Don Bradman in a match against New South Wales.Growden, p. 65. In the tour match against England that followed, Wally Hammond was given specific instructions to attack the inexperienced Fleetwood-Smith and remove him from consideration for the Test matches, which he accomplished during an innings of 203.Cricinfo: Bodyline timeline, November 1932. Retrieved 18 November 2007. The England manager, Plum Warner, later wrote that too much attention was given to this performance and he was sanguine about Fleetwood-Smith's potential as a Test bowler.Growden, p. 66. Despite Grimmett's absence from the Australian team—he was dropped after the third Test—the Australian selectors opted not to gamble by choosing Fleetwood-Smith. Instead, they called on the all-rounders Ernie Bromley and "Perka" Lee.
The following season, Fleetwood-Smith transferred from St Kilda to the Melbourne club as they had found him employment.Growden, p. 67. He collected 41 wickets for Victoria in seven matches, with a best match return of 12/158 against South Australia. This earned him a place in the Australian team for the 1934 tour of England. With Grimmett returned to favour, Fleetwood-Smith was unable to gain selection in the Test matches despite taking 106 first-class wickets (at a cost of 19.20 runs each) on the tour. Initially sceptical of his ability, Wisden thought that his bowling was "erratic" during the early part of the tour, but that he improved dramatically during the second half of the season.Wisden, 1935 edition: The Australians in England 1934. Retrieved 19 November 2007. Against Sussex, Northants and HDG Leveson-Gower's XI, he took ten wickets for the match. In the latter game, he bowled an inspired spell to Maurice Leyland, the most prolific English batsman of the Test series. Leyland had great success in dealing with O'Reilly and Grimmett, but could not fathom Fleetwood-Smith's various deliveries.Growden, p. 53.
During the 1934–35 season, Fleetwood-Smith set a new Sheffield Shield record of 60 wickets in six matches, which remained until Colin Miller claimed 67 wickets in 11 matches in 1997–98.Most Wickets in a Season in Australia Domestic First-Class Competition. Retrieved 18 February 2009. He dominated Victoria's bowling—the next best was Ernie McCormick with 22 wickets—as the team won the Sheffield Shield.Cricinfo: Victorian Sheffield Shield Averages 1934–35. Retrieved 20 November 2007. In the match that effectively decided the title, Fleetwood-Smith took 15 wickets against a New South Wales team that included nine Test players.Cricinfo: NSW v Victoria at Sydney 1934–35, scorecard. Retrieved 20 November 2007. He guided the Melbourne club to the premiership in the district competition with seven wickets in the final against Collingwood. Chosen to tour South Africa during the following summer, he made his belated Test debut in the opening match of the series at Durban. Taking the wicket of Ken Viljoen in his first over, Fleetwood-Smith finished the match with five wickets. He played the next two Tests (for four wickets), but injured his hand while fielding his own bowling in a tour match against Border. This forced him out of the remaining matches on the tour and caused him problems in the forthcoming months.
Ashes series 1936–37 Following his return to Australia, Fleetwood-Smith had surgery to a tendon in his finger and missed the early stages of the 1936–37 season. In his absence, Australia lost the opening two Tests of The Ashes series against England amid claims that the players were not responding well to their new captain, Don Bradman.Haigh and Frith, p. 92. Grimmett, now considered by the selectors to be too old for Test cricket, was not selected during the series. Therefore, Fleetwood-Smith recorded career-best figures at an opportune time. Playing against Queensland he captured 7/17 and 8/79, then secured his selection for the Test team with a five-wicket haul against New South Wales.Growden, p. 111. In the third Test at Melbourne, he contributed to Australia's victory with a valuable innings as a nightwatchman and 5/124 in England's second innings as they were bowled out for 323, chasing a victory target of 689 runs.Wisden, 1938 edition: 3rd Test Australia v England, match report. Retrieved 19 December 2007.
Immediately after the match, Fleetwood-Smith, O'Reilly, Leo O'Brien and Stan McCabe were summoned to appear before four of Australia's leading cricket administrators, who read a prepared statement accusing the team of excessive drinking, inattention to fitness and disloyalty to the captain. The meeting ended in confusion when the four players were told that they were not being held responsible for the matters raised.Haigh and Frith, p. 93. This incident has been the subject of conjecture for many years. It is often interpreted as an illustration of a sectarian divide in Australian cricket during the period. Fleetwood-Smith attended Xavier (a Roman Catholic school) with O'Brien, while McCabe and O'Reilly were raised as Catholics in rural New South Wales; at least two of the administrators present were members of Masonic lodges.Haigh and Frith, p. 94. Several of the senior players wanted McCabe as captain in place of Bradman, whose relationship with O'Reilly was strained.Haigh and Frith, p. 95. However, Fleetwood-Smith's presence is puzzling as he missed the first two Tests, to which the administrators specifically referred.Growden, p. 118. Greg Growden, his biographer, records that Fleetwood-Smith had an unlikely friendship with Bradman (in that the two men were of opposite personalities), which later cooled after an unknown disagreement not associated with this incident.Growden, pp. 151–152, 166.