A few weeks before the call from the England Test side that has already changed his life, Jamie Smith received another that will soon do so again.
It was not long after the close of play during Surrey’s early season County Championship fixture at Kent that Smith’s partner, Kate, broke the news that she was expecting the couple’s first child, due to be born in December.
“It was pretty cold, I was in four jumpers and that sort of thing,” Smith recalls. “It was nice to receive that sort of call when you’re a bit down.
“It’s going to be a special thing to end the year on. I’m sure 2024 will be one of the most memorable of my life, and all the cricket stuff’s been fantastic. But that was the best news I’ve received out of it all.”
Fatherhood seems unlikely to faze Smith, at least on the basis that during this breakthrough year, nothing else has. At the start of it, he had been capped just twice by England, in two games for a second-string 50-over side against Ireland last September, one of which was washed out. Now, he heads to Pakistan for this month’s Test tour on the cusp of becoming an all-format mainstay.
“I just feel like I'm getting more and more comfortable,” says Smith, who averaged almost 50 in his first summer as a Test cricketer, scored a maiden hundred against Sri Lanka at Old Trafford and was then handed the ODI wicketkeeping spot to face Australia, too.
“There are fewer nerves. Expectation's always going to be there but you can start walking out with a bit more confidence. That's where I play my best cricket.”
To those who have seen and touted it for years, Smith’s ascension was inevitable, even if its speed came as a shock, after Jonny Bairstow and Surrey teammate Ben Foakes were both dropped at the start of the summer.
“I’m not someone who had a divine right to play for England or to do anything in the game,” he insists, having been hailed as a future Test cricketer almost from the moment he made a hundred on first-class debut for Surrey in 2019.
“Until it comes, it was always a dream and you're always striving towards that. But I never felt that: 'Yeah, it's going to happen now' or 'I'm one century away from being in'. It was just that if I kept going the way I was, it could happen. And if not then you pick yourself up and go again.”
It is that level outlook that has marked the 24-year-old out as an unusually stable novice during this first Test run. As magnificent as some of the stroke-play and power hitting has been, it is ‘temperament’ and ‘maturity’ that have been the buzzwords, among teammates and commentators alike.
“In the settings and surroundings you're in, you grow up quick,” Smith explains. “You're pushed into second-team cricket from an early age or you're playing up age-groups, breaking into the first-team.
“You do have to mature quickly. You can't come in as the boisterous 18-year-old kid who's fresh out of school and expect to carry on as normal.”
Boisterous is not really Smith’s style, in any case. On the field, he prefers a quip with the slips to a barney with a batter, and likes to “just look around and appreciate the position you’re in”. Stump mics seldom take a peppering - indeed, by wicket-keeping standards, England’s latest is a virtual mute.
You have to mature quickly - you can’t come in as a boisterous 18-year-old kid fresh out of school
Away from cricket, too, Smith is a private man, to the point that his Instagram profile is not open to the public and he is not on X, formerly Twitter, at all, “a bit of learned experience from other people”.
“I think that’s just my personality in general,” he says. “I’m quite quiet, I just like to go about my business, really. I don’t want to look for all the headlines and that kind of stuff. I wouldn’t say I’m massively on it with all the social media like some of the other boys. I very much like to get on with my day and go from there.”
One of Smith’s escapes from cricket is going to watch West Ham United, not, as he laughs, that they are offering much escapism right now: life under Julen Lopetegui has not started well and cricket’s relentless schedule has kept him from the London Stadium so far this season anyway.
We are speaking the day before the Fourth ODI against Australia at Lord’s in late-September, by which point Smith has been on the go almost ceaselessly for six months.
A five-day break after his debut Test series against West Indies is the most he has managed since the County Championship began in early April, and even that needed Birmingham Phoenix’s permission to skip a couple of games in The Hundred.
“I am pretty tired now,” he admits, though there is no rest coming, with the three Tests in Pakistan to be played back-to-back. “It is full on but I wouldn't have it any other way.”
Next year, though, will be different. Smith is certain to be handed his first central contract in the latest batch, giving the ECB licence to manage his Surrey workload.
The major benefit of this year’s grind, however, has been on Smith’s wicketkeeping, which at last has become a regular gig, after years as Foakes’ occasional deputy at Surrey.
“I actually thought I did quite a good job,” Smith says of his performances behind the Test stumps, in a tone of small surprise that speaks to the doubts some had about his relative inexperience with the gloves.
“It was nice to just get in a bit of a rhythm with it. Sometimes when I do keep for Surrey you're either doing one Championship game or it's T20s, then you're back in the field, maybe a couple of games at the back end if Ben was away with England.
“I find it takes me a bit of time to get into but once I'm in that rhythm I feel quite comfortable and very relaxed out there.”
Pakistan - where Smith has never previously played - will pose an altogether different challenge, either for throwing up sharp turning wickets, where Foakesian fast hands are key, or flat ones like those on the tour two years ago, where every missed chance can be doubly costly on long, hot days in the dirt.
“I checked the weather the other day for Multan and it was 38 degrees,” Smith laughs. “It’d be nice if it could cool down a fraction”. Spoiler alert: it hasn’t.
After that debut series, Smith admitted to feeling mentally drained, which raised eyebrows with a view to Pakistan’s likely toil given only one of the three Tests against West Indies made it as far as the fourth day.
It was, he says, “just emotionally a lot” and even during the Sri Lanka Tests that followed, he got better at switching off in-game, going for massages or treatment after fielding, rather than sitting straight on the balcony, watching and waiting to bat.
He slept better, too, but knows he best make use of that luxury now. There is a new arrival not far off that will change everything again.
