Early warning of run rain

History shows that when Steve Smith starts a series with big knocks, he continues in the same vein and puts the opposition to sword.

Dwelling on the idiosyncrasies of Steve Smith’s batting technique has become passe. To eulogise his match-winning abilities has become repetitive. It’s time we just marvelled at his batting genius and worry less about what makes him a batting colossus. For such has been his success, consistency, mastery of bowlers, surfaces and situations that he’s the closest to batting perfection in contemporary cricket, closest to inhabiting the rarefied space of all-time greats.

He’s already being talked up as the greatest Australian batsman since Donald Bradman, if not the most influential since him. The twin hundreds against England at Edgbaston only ratified such claims, though such temptations to compare and classify could be kept aside till he calls time on his career. But as of now, he is a notch above the other members of the holy quartet of contemporary cricket that includes Virat Kohli, Kane Williamson and Joe Root, as far as Test cricket is concerned.

He might be the least classical of them – he has made a business of non-classicism — but in the last five years, his methods have helped him net more runs, conquer more shores and fashion more wins than any of them. That he achieved all these by being different, by not being governed by convention, by taking residence on off-stump, by fidgeting and twitching at the crease, by hitting the ball to unorthodox places, is merely incidental.

Some of his numbers, though numbers aren’t the most instructive tool to gauge the greatness of a batsman, have a transcendental value.

Like his average of 72.56 since December 2013. The corresponding numbers for his peers, Kohli, Williamson and Root read 57, 66 and 50 respectively. In the last five years, he has collected 1000-plus runs four times a year. The exception was last year, when he played only four Tests.

Likewise, it’s difficult to find a hole in his remarkable body of work. To nit-pick, one could say that he averages 29 against Bangladesh, but that’s as nit-picky as you could get of Smith. He has scored runs pretty much everywhere, against the swing and seam of James Anderson and Stuart Broad, the pace and fire of Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel, the spin and guile of Ravichandran Ashwin and Rangana Herath, conquered cricketing outposts from Lord’s to Christchurch, Centurion to Colombo, Pune to Kingston.

But among the superlatives showered on him, the most glittering, the most Bradmanesque of all is his ability to influence a series, to carry his form through a series, to dig a trench at the crease and bat in a bubble of invulnerability. This Ashes is shaping like one, as was the previous installment and a host of other series.

Enter, the run-Smith

India series (2014-15): 769 runs at 128.16 in 8 innings, 4 hundreds, 2 fifties

The first series that saw Smith transform from a resurgent batsman to a batting phenomenon. Prior to the four-Test rubber, he had scored just four hundreds from 42 innings. By the time the series ended, he had as many from just eight innings, each of them coming in the foundation-laying first innings- 162 not out in Adelaide, 133 in Brisbane, 192 in Melbourne and 117 in Sydney. The Indian bowlers, like several after them, were led into believing that the big, full inswinger would bargain his wicket, what with his exaggerated shuffle.

A folly, as Smith debunked the greatest batting myth about himself as well as the general scepticism of the method.

He began working the ball relentlessly, from on the stumps and even beyond, to the on-side, much like a subcontinental batsman. They waited for him to miss, hoping his freakish streak would end, but the sight of Smith flaying them on the leg-side became so familiar a sight that they completely gave up on this by the Boxing Day Test.

He would almost tease with his pads, the smart bowler would not take the bait, keeping a wider line. But then creeps in the thought that maybe, cunningly, one could be sneaked into his pads. So in it goes, and away it goes off his flashing blade.

As for the nagging corridor length, the fourth-stump line they thought would cramp him, he kept freeing up his arms and flaying it through the off-side too. It was thus a series that saw Smith jump into the pedestal of contemporary batting greats.

Conquering England

Ashes (2015-16): 508 runs in 56.44 in nine innings; 2 hundreds, one fifty

Eventually England won the series, but not after a transitioning Australia offered a stiff challenge in some of the most challenging conditions for batsmen. And Smith was at the heart of their revival bid.

Though his form tapered off midway through the series, after a spectacular double hundred at Lord’s, he signed off the series with a terrific 143 at The Oval, quelling doubts that he was susceptible to spin bowling. Before that, during the 215 at Lord’s, he dispelled doubts that the high-quality seam and swing bowling of Anderson and Broad could harass him.

The outside-the-off-stump technique was masterful, the gauging of swing was exemplary, his assurance in leaving deliveries was a tutorial for aspiring batsmen.

Few other batsmen have ever read them as efficiently as him, forcing the curators to make green surfaces greener. They did manage to keep him quiet in Birmingham and Nottingham. But none of the dismissals suggested a definitive weakness in his technique. Rather, he blamed reckless stroke-making, which he would soon amend in his quest for perfection.

Mastering the subcontinent

India series (2016-17): 499 runs at 71.28 in 8 innings, 3 hundreds

The best way to stop Smith, the India think tank decided, was to roll out malicious turners, thinking Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja would unearth a weakness. Subsequently, three of the four surfaces turned out to be throwback turners. In the end India managed to win the series 2-1, but not after Smith scoring three terrific hundreds.

The second-innings hundred on a deviously-cracking Pune strip was arguably the finest in this neck of the woods since Kevin Pietersen’s in Mumbai. That no other batsmen from either side in the second innings managed a score more than 31 attested to the difficulties of the pitch. Smith used his feet beautifully, played with soft hands, deciphered the craft and variations of Ashwin, Jadeja and Jayant Yadav, comprehended the whims of the pitch and strung together an innings of supreme mastery and mind-boggling restraint to cornerstone a victory. He backed it up with a sterling 178 in Ranchi on a spiteful surface and 111 in Dharamsala. Though Australia lost the series, Smith’s batting stocks soared.

Demolition man

Ashes (2017-18): 687 runs at 137.40 in 7 innings, 137.40; three hundreds, two fifties.

Smith began with his slowest hundred in Brisbane – a precursor to his 144 in this ongoing duel – in an adverse situation. Broad and Anderson were breathing fire, the Gabba was offering lateral movement and Smith was losing partners. Smith wasn’t at his fluent best, but laboured through and helped Australia eke out a slender lead and eventually set the tone for a hard-fought series, masked by a 4-0 scoreline.

The inswinger nailed him twice in the second Test in Adelaide, lulling the English bowlers to believe they had dug up a workable plan. Suddenly, debates around his diminishing hand-eye coordination surfaced and swirled- he had endured an uncharacteristically low-return series in Bangladesh before this – but Smith wristed away such half-baked speculations with a blazing 239 in Perth, the first hundred of those runs were the quickest of his series. Thereafter, he just imposed himself on the Englishmen.

With 286 runs already in his account, in just two innings this Ashes, don’t count against him surpassing his own record.

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