[3] In a first-class career that lasted from 1888, when he was 18, till 1928, when he was 58, he also played cricket for Oxford and Cambridge Universities Past and Present (1890), fifteen matches for The Gentlemen (1891–1906), North of England (1891–1908), Gentlemen of England (1891–1910) and C. I. Thornton's XI (1892–1899) and, among other teams, twenty-seven games for H. D. G. Leveson-Gower's XI (1909–1928).

[6] A right-arm fast bowler, Smith took 454 wickets at 25.69, with a best return of 7 for 40 for Yorkshire against MCC in 1893.

A. Thomson said of him: "Ernest was one of that devoted band of August schoolmasters – happily they survive to-day – who pack their boys off home and add a kind of academic gaiety to the month's cricket."

He added that Smith could "defend like a lowered portcullis if Yorkshire were in serious trouble" or bat "like a charging cavalry leader".

His brother, A. E. Smith, played one first-class game for the "English Residents" in Philadelphia in 1890.