Welcome to England, then, Mr Smith: we’ve been expecting you. With 20 minutes to go before tea on a calm, clear, sun-bleached day in Cardiff, Steve Smith looked to have settled in for an afternoon of upright, endearingly fidgety right-handed dominance. Smith is, of course, the top-ranked Test batsman in the world right now, newly installed as Australia’s Ashes No3 and by extension the latest, rather callow member of a lineage of Aussie batting kingpins that stretches back though Ricky Ponting and Greg Chappell to the Pathé newsreel giants of the pre-modern age.
Not that everyone is convinced just yet. Smith’s status as the world’s No1 has come in a rush in the last two years, an ugly duckling transformation from twitchy, crabby leg-spinning all-rounder to twitchy, crabby gun batsman. Doubts had been voiced in England. Graeme Swann, who was biffed around the Waca by Smith in his last Test, has suggested it is a false position. England’s bowlers had hinted coyly at schemes hatched during their trip to Spain, the conviction that early exposure to the full, swinging ball would expose the glitches in a technique that presents the front pad to the bowler as a kind of lure, only to be ambushed at the last by the brilliance of Smith’s eye and those whip-crack hands.
Here Smith got the promised examination early on; and for all the ugliness of his eventual dismissal, he passed it too, up to a point. Emerging at the fall of David Warner’s wicket with the score on 52 for one, he was confronted by Jimmy Anderson in the middle of an accurate spell of nibble and nip, if not quite hooping swing. The ball was hard. England were fresh. Over to you, Steve.
For a while Anderson and Mark Wood bowled deliberately wide, luring Smith into playing balls others might leave as he walked across. There was one slightly streaky slap just past point to get off the mark and after that a series of cautious but increasingly convincing leaves. England may have plans for Smith but he has plans for them too, mainly to keep on playing like Steve Smith, a batsman with five first innings Test hundreds in his last six matches.
In the flesh Smith presents an absorbing spectacle even between deliveries, touching every part of his kit in well-worn spectacles-testicles-wallet-and-watch fashion. He stands straight and still as the bowler runs in, before bending his knees twice in vaguely music hall fashion, hoisting that red-smeared bat, then taking a late, improbable step across on to off-stump just as the ball is bowled, as though suddenly noticing he’s standing one pitch down from the stumps.
England believe this makes him an lbw candidate, understandably so given he is basically standing right in front of his stumps. And yet Smith’s eye is so good the weakness is more often negated, the bowler unsettled by chasing an illusory opening. This isn’t a chink, or a wobble or a bad habit, but an entirely natural way of playing, rediscovered in the last two years after some slightly fallow times following his Test debut in 2010, when he was picked as a like-for-like replacement for Nathan Hauritz.
The key for Smith in his most profitable period has been the ability simply to slow down, an epiphany that came in the first Test against South Africa in Centurion in 2014 when he spent 14 overs crawling through the 90s against an attack containing Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander.
In Cardiff he moved sedately to six from his first 21 balls at the mid-afternoon drinks break, before chopping Wood past point for two immediately afterwards with an extravagant flourish, bat moving through a great wafting arc like a samurai warming up for a ceremonial duel. At which point Smith began to rev up through the gears.
Moeen Ali had bowled three overs for eight from the Taff end. His first ball to Australia’s No3 was bulleted straight for four with a skip down the pitch. The second was a more violent, cross-batted version of the same. The fourth produced the shot of the day, a skip to the pitch and a lovely fluid drive through cover, a calculated act of violence that took Smith rollicking on to 28. The world’s No1 batsman was cooking. He was in the series. Pretty soon he was out too, and in slightly comical fashion.
No doubt the manner of Smith’s dismissal will be held against him, confirmation that as world No1s go he remains something of a caretaker, a man on a once-in-a-career spree. Credit must go to Moeen, though, who saw Smith coming and fired the ball in at his feet. And also to Alastair Cook, who took the catch at a funkier-than-thou straight short mid-on as Smith stumbled and fell trying to dig it out and popped the ball up to the England captain.
So Smith departed for a calm, decorative 33 that seemed, right up to its rather ugly end, likely to be quite a few more. But even in his dismissal there was evidence at least of a man playing to a plan, attacking England’s spinner to order when he might simply have accumulated. If there were grumbles in the press box about the world’s top-rated batsman being dismissed with such a villagey flourish then it is worth remembering plenty of great batsmen have been unorthodox, just as even the best players have tended towards the odd ugly dismissal. Inzamam ul-Haq falling on his stumps is surely the best of the lot. Brian Lara, who played four or five shots to every ball with his own home-made range of leaps and feints, could lose his rhythm completely, while England’s own highest run scorer across all formats, Kevin Pietersen, was prone to the odd horrible end. It could even be suggested Smith is in his own way a lesson for England’s own slightly rigid technicians at every level, a player who has settled into rather than fought against his own quirks, and wrung the absolute most from those bespoke gifts over the last two years.
England finished the day ahead in Cardiff with Australia on 264 for five and the top order winkled out. And yet, for all the sense of a chance missed on a flat pitch, Smith will perhaps still take a little heart from his resilience against the new-ish ball and the blunting, for an hour, of some well laid plans.
