Leicestershire Smith played for the
Leicestershire second team for a couple of years as a teenager before making his first-class debut in the
1990 season in a game against
Oxford University; he was
lbw for four in his only innings, but got another chance in a
County Championship match against
Glamorgan a fortnight later. He made 15 not out in the first innings before Leicestershire declared, and not batting at all in the second. He did not play another first-class game that season, though he did make a handful of appearances in the
Refuge Assurance League. Smith went on the
1990–91 Under-19 tour to New Zealand, and played in all five of their matches (two
"ODIs" and three
"Tests"). He made no real impression with the bat, with a top score of only 44, but had some success as a bowler, taking the wicket of future
New Zealand senior team captain
Stephen Fleming on three occasions in the "Tests". Back in England, he had a reasonable
1991 season, making 674 first-class runs at an
average of 37.44, although the highest of his 23 innings was only 71. Smith then went through a lean spell, and despite a maiden hundred against
Durham in April 1992, the nadir came in the
1993 season when Smith averaged a low 14.61 in 18 first-class innings, being dismissed in single figures on 11 occasions and only once passing fifty. Some recovery followed as he averaged just over 30 in each of the following two years, but it was
1996 that saw him return to form with three centuries including 190 against Glamorgan in August, and passing a thousand runs in a first-class season for the first time, finishing with 1,243 at 47.80 and helping Leicestershire to their first County Championship since
1975.
In 2005 he passed 1,400 first-class runs in a season for the first time, although his form in
one-day cricket was less impressive. In the final first-class match of the season, against
Essex at
New Road, he put on 333 for the fourth wicket with
Stephen Moore before the latter was caught for 191. This established a new county record partnership for this wicket, beating the 281 that
Younis Ahmed and
Alan Ormrod had put on in
1979. Smith's 2006 season was rather less successful: he failed to reach 1,000 first-class runs for the first time since 2000, hitting 915 runs at 36.60 including one score of 203 he made against
Somerset in June. His form tailed off towards the end of the season, and in his last five matches he made only 163 runs in nine innings. In one-day cricket he scored 487 runs at 34.79, his highest average for four seasons. ==Coaching career==