Steve Smith’s ultimate tale of survival at the Gabba forged under his father’s tutelage

AS England tried all manner of tactics to claim Steve Smith’s prized wicket, the Aussie skipper’s lessons of adaptability and mental toughness learnt as a kids came to the fore.

Steve Smith avoids another England bouncer.

AT first glance, Steve Smith’s effort to survive a bouncer war and all sorts of quirky tricks at the Gabba has absolutely nothing to do with him winning a junior tennis match.

But Smith himself will tell you differently.

The theme of his extraordinary innings of defiance and resourcefulness had its origins in the way he was coached by his father as a child.

The title of Chapter One in Smith’s recently released autobiography is one word – Adapt!

Smith doesn’t bother with too many traditional niceties in the first chapter. He simply tells the story of the day he was being flogged 4-0 in a junior tennis match.

Steve Smith avoids another England bouncer.

He was so bereft of inspiration he looked up at his father who pointed at his temple.

“Adapt!,’’ was his father’s message.

Smith introduced slices and stop-spinners, ran the older man around, won the match and says the lesson he learnt from that game “sums up my life in cricket ... it is all about being able to adapt’’.

Smith’s father Peter would relentlessly challenge him in the backyard with seamers, spinners and bouncers, all the while urging him to think his way through the challenges.

LISTEN: Ben Horne reviews Steve Smith’s incredible Ashes century at the Gabba on an entertaining day of Test cricket.

He learnt early that sport was as much about Plan B and C as Plan A, just as it has been at the Gabba in this Test match where he got deep in the trenches to eek out Australia’s slowest Test century for seven years, a studied masterpiece of mental toughness and adaptability.

England tried all manner of tactics to him and they all came up with nothing more than thin air in this magnificently old-fashioned Test match.

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There was a time when they bowled so wide of off-stump that he showed massive restraint to score just one run through the off side off 100 balls.

On Saturday they bounced him so relentlessly and took so many balls out of his scoring zones that he scored just 17 runs off his first 66 balls in the first session and his sole boundary came with a humble leg glance.

Just think about that. One of the world’s most debonair batsman faced the equivalent of 11 overs and reached the fence once.

Hats off to England for their choker hold. Hats off to Smith for not going blue in the face.

His wicket is so prized that once when he flashed and missed outside off stump, five fieldsmen instinctively put their hands on their heads, looking much like desert explorers who’ve just realised their water bottle has a hole in it.

So great is Smith as a batsman that he is challenging trends in the game.

It has become fashionable in cricket to accept that interstate batting averages are in decline and an average of 35 is the old 40 due to the corruption of techniques and concentration spans with short form cricket.

Steve Smith floats one over the slips.

But that all goes out the window when you noted that Smith is roaring along at an average more than 60 in Tests.

Nathan Lyon said recently that junior coaches are also reviewing their commitment to textbook coaching techniques in the wake of Smith’s quirky, homespun style.

There are all sorts of statistics that can illustrate Smith’s brilliance as a batsmen and here is just one.

Yesterday Smith joined David Boon, an outstanding player by any measure, among batsmen who have scored 21 Test centuries.

There is a difference though – Boon took 50 more Tests to get there, no slight on him but a truly revealing measure of Smith’s greatness.