Scintillating Smith not stopping anytime soon

Of the 74 players with the distinction of playing 100-plus Tests, only 16 have a batting average higher than 50. Steve Smith will not merely join this pantheon of greats when he plays his 100th Test on Thursday – at Headingley in the third Test of the Ashes series – but sail past all of them to sit atop the exalted list. 

In 146 years of Test cricket, no batter has averaged higher than Smith's 59.56 after playing as many matches. Not Sachin Tendulkar. Not Brian Lara. Not Vivian Richards. Not Sunil Gavaskar.

That Smith should bring up the milestone at Headingley is perhaps fitting, for it was here that he first showed glimpses of his batting ability. The year was 2010 when Smith, all of 21, was handed his Baggy Green cap in a two-Test series against Pakistan as a leg-spinner batting at No. 8.

With Australia still desperately seeking a successor to Shane Warne three years after his retirement, Smith's blonde mane was probably reason enough — rather than any mastery on the craft of leg-spin — for Australia to hope he was the heir apparent to Warne. It was quickly palpable that investing in Smith's leg-spin would be futile, but by hitting 77 off 100 balls in the second innings of the second Test in Leeds, Smith had shown ample batting smarts.

Over the past decade, it is this shrewdness, of knowing what works for him, that has enabled Smith to reach the pinnacle of Test batting.

"Yeah, proud I suppose. What I've been able to achieve in the game, it's been a great journey. I've enjoyed every moment of it. I am extremely excited to walk out for my 100th Test at Headingley," Smith, 34, told reporters after the second Test at Lord's before adding, "Big difference from 2010 at Lord's to now. I've got myself pushed up the order a little bit."

As has been well-documented in recent years, Smith defies the rules of the batting manual. Do not make exaggerated trigger movements? Smith takes a leg-stump guard but shuffles across to almost finish up outside off-stump at the point of contact. Bring your bat down straight? Smith's bat points towards gully when the bowler is in his delivery stride.

And yet if Smith has had all this success in a format that asks the most questions, it's because his fundamentals are robust. Freeze a frame of Smith when bat is making contact with ball, and you would notice that the pre-delivery movement and other idiosyncrasies – he adjusts his left pad, right pad, thigh guard and abdomen guard with his right glove before tapping the bat on the turf for every delivery – are perhaps a distraction from a relatively sound method that he has devised for himself.

In a Sky Sports batting masterclass in 2019, former England captain Nasser Hussain asked Smith, "Do you consider your batting to be unorthodox?"

"Perhaps the way I move in my pre-delivery movement, but all my basic fundamentals are there once that's done," Smith responded. "I get myself in a still position. My head is still. From there, I don't think I am too unorthodox."

Of his tendency to waft his bat in his stance and bring it down at an angle, Smith reasoned: "I wouldn't change anyone's hands. Everyone's swing is really natural. My bat goes out there, but I do end up coming back around and I keep my hands reasonably close to my body. And then I am able to bring it down and hit the ball straight."

While the pronounced trigger movement can be an eyesore to purists, Smith believes it helps him limit modes of dismissal. "My general stance where my back foot is going to almost off stump, or maybe even outside at stages, I know that anything outside my eyeline isn't hitting the stumps," he said in a podcast for Rajasthan Royals, his former IPL franchise, in 2020. "For me, you shouldn't get out if the ball is not hitting the stumps, so that is just limiting the ways I get out. Sometimes, I get trapped in front but I'm okay with that at stages, knowing that if it is outside my eyeline, I don't need to try and play the ball, I can just leave that."

The shuffle often lulls bowlers into targeting that middle and leg-stump line, but he's so wristy and strong off his pads, almost like he was born in the subcontinent, that he capitalises on those deliveries with mundane regularity. So far, a little over 35% of his 9,113 Test runs have come through square-leg and midwicket. Only New Zealand's Neil Wagner and the Indian bowlers on the 2020/21 tour of Australia have had some success with that leg-stump line of attack against Smith.

Evident through his insights is his quest for batting perfection. It comes through in his net sessions and in the centre, constantly chastising himself and looking for ways of bettering his game. "I don't particularly like watching cricket that much. When you get out, you have to sit and watch somebody else do it. I prefer doing it myself. I just love batting and being out in the middle," Smith said in that conversation with Sky Sports.

It is this voracious appetite for batting that puts him in the league of the greatest ever. On average, he scores a hundred every 5.47 innings. Familiarity with the names above him in this list requires you to be well-versed in the game's history: Everton Weekes, Herbert Sutcliffe, Clyde Walcott, George Headley and Don Bradman. They were all batting stalwarts, but none of them played 100-plus innings. Smith has played 175 innings in a glowing testament to his longevity and consistency.

So, where does Smith feature in the debate about the greatest Test batters of all time? If Novak Djokovic has a claim to being the greatest men's tennis player ever on account of winning 23 Grand Slams, shouldn't Smith's extraordinary numbers prompt a similar discussion?

His place in the pantheon will eventually be decided by the numbers he finishes with. If he can maintain the same hunger till the very end, he will compel us to stir the GOAT debate more seriously again.