Cricket fans and current and former players have joined friends and family at a memorial service for former England and Hampshire cricketer Robin Smith.<\/p>\n
The event at Winchester Cathedral saw hundreds pay their respects to Smith who died in December aged 62, at his home in Perth, Australia.<\/p>\n
Nicknamed ‘The Judge’, Smith won 62 Test caps for England between 1988 and 1996 and scored 4,236 runs at an average 43.67, including nine centuries.<\/p>\n
Smith spent his entire domestic career at Hampshire. Rod Bransgrove, honorary life president at Hampshire Cricket, called him “a true son of the county”.<\/p>\n
He described Smith as “possibly the best match-winning cricketer” that ever played for Hampshire.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, I reflect upon his brilliance as a player for both England and for Hampshire but my true reflections are of him as a very, very close friend.<\/p>\n
“I miss him dreadfully, personally, but I think the Hampshire faithful miss him just as much,” he added.<\/p>\n
Smith won two Benson & Hedges Cups and a NatWest Trophy in his time with the team, captaining them between 1998 and 2002.<\/p>\n
“To have this many people at Winchester Cathedral is extraordinary and I know the family are very proud that this has been arranged for Robin,” said his brother Chris Smith, who played alongside his sibling at Hampshire.<\/p>\n
“As a brother he was just a fantastic guy, lovely to be around and as a teammate he was a terrific bloke,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cricket fans and current and former players have joined friends and family at a memorial service for former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-636292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}