If there would be a global census or population survey of cricket fans in whole planet, the fraction of people who had witnessed Don Bradman play live would not be huge.
There are great stories and magical work of his being described by those fortunate enough to have seen him in action. The main highlight and defining feature of this unicorn was his exceptional ability to score bulk of runs with that astonishing average hardly dipping below perfection.
It’s just difficult to reconcile how a man can completely dominate an era so perfectly unless he’s had that angelic quality, which many would argue Bradman embodied.
Sachin Tendulkar was a fresh face for many of 1990s youth. From hitting a ton on a fast deck at the age of 17 to playing for nearly decades and retiring with an average above 50 – nothing but tributes for “The Master”.
There’s also batting geniuses like Sir Garfield Sobers, Brian Lara, Sunil Gavaskar, the Waugh brothers, Ricky Ponting and many more of legends are (too long of list to mention individually) who started as potential superstars and as their stocks rose further, as they became saviours of our sweet beloved game.
For the past two decades of cricket, there has been a true red-ball giant – Steve Smith.
He has maintained the legacy of red-ball batting in such a remarkable fashion.
Sure, there are batters who were equally awesome in similar periods, but Smudge remained the only one who became a legend of the game – starting from a dud.
Now, all of those previous big names mentioned have remarkable stories of evolution.
Smith, however, might have the most impressive evolution history – and a unique one too. In fact, everything about the top-order batter makes him a one-off.
In December 2009, and Smith was called into the Australian squad for the first time as cover for a sore Nathan Hauritz before a Test against the West Indies in Perth. It was announced that Hauritz would prove his fitness and play – but Smith would hang around the team for much of the next 18 months.
Steve Smith and Josh Hazlewood. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
Selectors were adamant that Smith would blossom into a world-class leg-spinner if given adequate time and space – even Ponting himself mentioned that, “the view from the selectors was that he could be the next really bright, shining light as far as spin bowling was concerned”.
Once selected and spending time in the dressing room, it quickly became clear that Smith was, in fact, a batting all-rounder. However, due to a lack of other options, they were compelled to use him as a spinner.
It’s incredulously true and enough to stumble one that Steve Smith was once selected to play an Ashes Test on the basis of his joke-telling skills: “It’s about having energy in the field,” he famously said ahead of the Perth Test of 2010/11, “and having fun and making sure everyone else around is having fun, whether it be telling a joke or something like that.”
After playing five Test matches from 2010 to 2011 as a bowling all-rounder, Smith was recalled to the Australian Test team in 2013.
Smith’s stats before March 14, 2013 were 33 ODIs, 20 T20s, five Tests and two 50s – and just 643 days later, he was the captain of his country.
How incredibly unbelievable is that? Who would have thought the “crab” would become the king? It seemed distant, towering, impossible and unimaginable.
For a player who started as a leg-spinner when his team was looking for the next Shane Warne, and then transformed into such an incredible batter who once came closest to Bradman, and all against the odds — this is truly special.
If this was a Hollywood film script proposal, it’d have broken cinema records.
There are all sorts of comparisons flying around in cricket circles, on social media, and beyond – is Smith the best since Bradman? The best since Sachin? The best since World War II? And so on.
Some of these comparisons truly make sense, but a lot of codswallop is also there.
There’s nothing much that needs to be said about those comparisons, as everyone sees – and deserves to see with their own eyes. However, one thing is for sure: Smith is unique.
There might be better players than him, but there’s no one as idiosyncratic as him.
Steve Smith. (Photo by Alex Davidson-ICC/ICC via Getty Images)
When it’s concluded that Smudge is pretty much unique, it’s not just about his career – it’s also perhaps more about his game and his style.
Smith perhaps does not possess that natural, gorgeous stroke-making that you associate with his brilliant peers like Virat Kohli, Joe Root, or Kane Williamson. He certainly is not as fun to watch as other modern greats such as Lara or Tendulkar.
But Smith has been the professor who knew what to do on the pitch and which delivery to attack. He does a lot of grunt work, but he just possesses this very ability – the ability to blow opposition bowlers out of the water, like a magician doing card tricks while simultaneously stealing the show.
Bowlers just remain shorn of enormous know-how while facing him.
Take that century in Pune in 2017. Every shot seemed to scream, “This might be the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, and it might be a rank turner — but we’re being hit by Steve Peter Devereux Smith”.
They acknowledged, “It’s not our fault because you’re dealing with a monster.”
Or like the Ashes 2019. There’s a phenomenon about it: Smith’s peak – 144, 142, 92, 211, 82, 80, and 23. That’s 774 runs, featuring three centuries and one double century at an average of 110.57.
He scored 35.5% of Australia’s runs off the bat when the team aggregated 2180 runs in the Ashes 2019.
Smith scored 774 runs, 333 ahead of Ben Stokes from England, the second-highest run-scorer of the series, and 421 more than Marnus Labuschagne, the second-highest run-scorer for Australia.
A small description of one of all-time series where he swallowed everything in his path – cranking up that pressure, Smith was irrepressible.
Oh, there’s nothing like the halo around peak Smith. Jofra Archer threw everything at him in that series, yet Smith didn’t get out to him. England were so frazzled by him in that series that, at one point, they were taking him out of the equation despite four wickets remaining.
At one stage in one match of that series, instead of taking the new ball, England used the old ball and bowled off-spin from both ends because Matthew Wade — who was already well set — had a bit of a weakness against it.
Australia had lost four wickets, and England were targeting Wade like he was a number 10.
(Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
It seemed like they were almost entirely uninterested in getting the wicket at the other end. They looked like twitchy balls of mess. Their hands looked pretty much tied as, at the other end, a wall was conspicuous. No matter how much time or effort you throw at it, the wall always wins.
Because Smith is unorthodox, England thought unorthodox tactics must be needed to get him out. This led to some bizarre fields and bowling ploys.
From virtually everyone on the off side, bowling wide of the stumps, to everyone on the leg side, bowling at the stumps, to most other variations in between. Whatever tactic – nothing seemed to work.
That’s peak Smith — one of the best players of fast bowling I’ve ever seen. Looking at the concept of pressure right in the eye and making a mockery of it, killing it with his unparalleled tranquility.
The million-dollar question though remains: What makes him so special? What truly is the reason for him being able to summon his inner nasty streak of doing magical stuff?
Well, being unorthodox, Smith always seemed to have that little extra time on the back foot. Sure, all batters get hit at some point, but he handles it differently.
There’s something almost preternatural about his “feel” and triggers. I can’t describe it any other way. He can get into an awkward position, and just when it seems like the bowler has him, he’ll defend or flick the ball to the boundary. It’s not perfectly analogous to any other player.
If I were Smith, I’d occasionally think that I’m winning the battle already before I’ve faced a ball. When bowlers deliberately avoid the stumps most of the time, looking to apply unorthodox tactics, you’re taking most dismissals out of the equation. Bowlers would be bowling there like crash test dummies, while he’s receiving the prize.
The 35-year-old has such quicker footwork, something that looks like an Exocet missile. He moves so fast at times, it’s impossible for all, or any, of the adjustments to actually bother him.
It can’t be wrong to say that Smith is also one of the best problem solvers we have ever seen in cricket. His ability to work things out is what distances him from other good batters.
With his creative brain power, he picks things up quickly, whether it’s advice from others or tricks gleaned through bruising experience.
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Frankly, making an astonishing comeback after facing the big lightning bolt to the heart by getting banned for ball tampering also falls into being mentally very strong.
Disparaged, denigrated, and criticised – but he had just controlled the command centre of his brain, shutting out the outside noise by merely focusing on the task at hand, and was able to summon deep mental reserves by considering the holy grail of self-improvement.
For example, after the Gabba knock this summer, Smith said that he had dabbled with his technique for about 15 years. He pretty much changes how he bats for every different game, depending on the surface.
Obsessed is probably an understatement when describing the relationship of Smith with cricket. A few years ago, a teammate of his suggested privately that it’s actually hard to talk with him about anything not cricket.
Some players fill their time watching movies, others playing FIFA – Steven Smith does it by training, talking, and preparing. Every time he sees free time, adrenaline will course through his veins as he prepares himself for a match as if he’s a prizefighter.
Even on one of his tours, when Ricky Ponting walked past Smith’s hotel room at 7am, he heard the tap-tap-tap of Smith’s bat hitting the floor. He even gets his wife to feed the bowling machine for him.
For a player who was not a batting prodigy and initially selected in the Australian team as a leg-spinning allrounder — and then scoring 10,000 Test runs and 35 tons with an average above 55 — Smith has enough credentials to claim that he’s the best Test batter since Sachin, Sobers, or whoever was last.
But him being totally dominant with his idiosyncratic play and being too damn good at it tells us that there’s only one Steve Smith, and there won’t be any like him.
He is in rare air.
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