Tom Smith has decided this will be his last summer as a Gloucestershire player. The 37-year-old left-arm spinner will retire when the county’s Vitality Blast campaign ends, bringing to a close a twelve-season stint that has yielded 154 T20 wickets—second on the club’s list and fifth in the competition’s history—and 301 scalps across all formats.
Gloucestershire are unlikely to reach the quarter-finals, so Thursday’s meeting with Sussex at Cheltenham is almost certain to be his final outing in front of a home crowd. He signed a one-year extension last winter that let him mix playing with part-time coaching, but only five appearances have followed and coaching has gradually taken centre stage.
“It feels like the right time,” Smith wrote in an open letter on the club website. “Over the past few seasons, I’ve been fortunate to begin building a coaching career alongside playing, and I’m now ready to give that my full focus.”
His record is quietly impressive. Last season he helped Gloucestershire lift the T20 Blast trophy against Somerset at Edgbaston, adding to the One-Day Cup medal he picked up back in 2015. Before that, he was part of the side that climbed into Division One of the Championship. Spin bowlers often age well, yet Smith accepts that his bigger impact these days is with a clipboard rather than the ball.
The personal context matters, too. In 2018 Smith lost his wife, Laura, and has regularly spoken about how cricket—and Gloucestershire in particular—helped him through. He made sure to spell that out again.
“The Glosters dressing room is full of not just brilliant cricketers, but even better people. It’s been an honour to share it with them,” he wrote. “2018 was the hardest year of my life … the love and support I received from everyone at the club during that time meant more than I can ever say.”
He continued: “Finally to my family, my three beautiful daughters and my partner, Georgie, thank you for your love, patience, and support. You’ve been my rock, and now, hopefully, I’ll get to spend more time watching your matches.”
Mark Alleyne, now head coach but formerly a team-mate to many Gloucestershire stalwarts, believes Smith’s transition will be smooth.
“While Tom played more than 50 first-class matches, it’s in white-ball cricket where he truly excelled,” Alleyne said. “With 186 appearances, he has been one of the most consistent spinners in the country.”
Alleyne added: “As he begins a new chapter in coaching, we’re confident he’ll approach it with the same energy and skill that defined his playing career. He’s already made great strides in this area, and while the transition is expected to be seamless, we will never forget the outstanding contribution he has made to Gloucestershire cricket.”
Spin bowling in the Blast can be unforgiving—short straight boundaries, flat pitches, two fielders outside the ring in the powerplay—yet Smith’s economy rate has hovered around seven runs an over. He has rarely turned the ball square; instead he has relied on pace variation, angles and the odd skidder that hurries on. Those skills translate nicely into coaching, especially for young bowlers looking to survive in modern limited-overs cricket.
At 37 he is not ancient by slow-bowling standards—Somerset’s Roelof van der Merwe, for instance, is still going at 40—but Smith appears keen to leave while memories of success are fresh and the body still co-operates. County circuits can be relentless: four-day matches morph into 50-over games, then straight into the Blast. Finding space for family life is tricky even when you are winning.
The plan now is to slot into Gloucestershire’s back-room staff full time. The club have not talked specifics, though a spin-bowling mentorship role feels inevitable, and there is already chat about him helping the academy. Given his standing, it would be a surprise if he is not fast-tracked on to the ECB’s coaching pathway.
In the short term, of course, there is still the small matter of Sussex on Thursday. It could be a low-key farewell—mid-week, Cheltenham school ground, perhaps a few hundred in. But county cricket often works that way. Players spend years grafting in relative obscurity, then slip off almost unnoticed, leaving only the stats and a few memories. Smith appears comfortable with that. He simply wants one last chance to land a couple more arm-balls, hear a modest ripple of applause, and then get on with teaching the next bloke how to do it.
