Steve Smith back in familiar surroundings at Lord’s, but a man changed for the better

Steve Smith returns to the venue of his debut unrecognisable from the player who trundled his way through that first Test against Pakistan. And his evolution goes way beyond that of his batting.

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When Steve Smith made his Test debut at Lord’s, all spiky haired and smiling in 2010, he batted behind the man who is now his captain.

Tim Paine also played his first Test in that match, and made way more runs than Smith, who was picked as a long-shot leg-spinning hope who got more top spin when he played tennis than he did bowling.

That Paine made 54 runs across his two bats to Smith’s meagre return of 13, is incomprehensible now. The pair return to Lord’s this week as teammates again, but holding wildly different positions in the game’s folklore.

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Steve Smith is congratulated after claiming a wicket on debut at Lord's against Pakistan in 2010.

Smith, with a better career batting average than everyone except one, with 25 Test hundreds, 10 Ashes hundreds, and two in that unforgettable Edgbaston effort.

Paine is captain, but has no Test tons, just one short-form hundred too, and only one triple-figure score at first-class level. He scored 215 for Tasmania, against Western Australia, which featured Justin Langer, now his coach, as a player.

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That 215 is also exactly the score Smith made when he last played at Lord’s, when he feasted on a flat deck which, amazingly after he baffled the English bowlers so much at Birmingham, could be what we see this week.

The worm has turned so much for Smith since he trundled and stumbled his way through that first Test against Pakistan. He made one and 12, out both times to leg-spinner, and now convicted match-fixer, Danish Kaneria.

Next time back at Lord’s, in 2013, Smith went even worse. Still batting well down the order, but this time at number six, he was out for two and one.

Reinvented as the world’s best batsman, Smith struck a double Ashes ton at Lord’s in 2015.

They were returns which made Justin Langer’s comments after Edgbaston a little more understandable.

“Let’s face it, when he first came in, leg-spinner, unorthodox … everyone thought I’m not sure this kid’s going to make it,” Langer said.

But Langer also said Smith was the “greatest problem solver in world cricket”.

“So then he goes away and decides ‘I don’t want to be a leg-spinner, I want to be the best batsman in the world’ then he transforms himself and he is the best.”

The problem solving ball is now in England’s court.

The home of cricket awaits another Smith masterclass this week.

Smith is dominating all Ashes conversations before the second Test. Everyone is trying find a way to penetrate his armour, to find the batting Superman’s kryptonite.

That’s the greatest evolutionary step a batsmen can make, and it’s a step even his long-time English foe, Jimmy Anderson, had to concede.

“When someone gets 280 runs in a game (286) you have to chat about him. But sometimes, can you not just say he played unbelievably well,” Anderson said this week on his Tailenders podcast.

“He’s so hard to bowl at, he averages 63 in Test cricket, he’s pretty good. And sometimes players with that quality will have games like that.

Smith and Tim Paine have come together again after a number of twists and turns in both men’s careers.

“I don’t see how much more we could have done.”

Anderson may still be in the conversation with his English bowling brothers about getting Smith out, but he’s not playing. Instead the job will be left to Stuart Broad, who wrote this week that he fancied getting the man they call “Smudge” out early.

He doesn’t really know how, but he wants to.

“Yes, we will talk about this in the build-up to Lord’s but you have to remember since 2013 he averages more than 100 in the first innings of a Test match, in excess of 62 through his career and in the first Test he only showed a weakness when he got to 140,” Broad wrote in his Mail on Sunday column.

“I don’t think we want to be over-complicating things when it comes to him because, as we saw in 2015, if he bats on slow pitches that don’t move laterally he scores huge but, if he plays on pitches that nibble, he can be dismissed cheaply.”

Sure, he can be, but he hasn’t been too lately, and not at Lord’s. Smith got 58 in the second dig last time too.

Even during television coverage of a domestic T20 game last weekend, the pre-match chatter was all about how to get Smith.

Darren Gough took 229 Test wickets for England. None of them were Smith, he was finished when Smith was only 14. But he has a theory.

“Mess around on the crease. You have to do something different,” Gough said.

At Edgbaston last week Smith was an immovable object until he went past 140 in each knock.

“There’s a lot of movement going on with him. Use the crease, change the angle, slant it in, and then any movement is exaggerated by the angle you bowl it from, and the movement Steve Smith makes.

“Come wide of the crease, if it nicks back, you can get him LBW, if it nips away, he could nick off.”

He could.

But the evolution of Smith since that 2010 debut goes beyond just batting. He could do that in his sleep. Some say he does.

He’ now 30, been captain, been sacked as captain, and endured the humiliation of a 12-month playing ban, the sort of embarrassing fall from grace that will always be lingering, even after Smith has got back up again and turned the conversation the other way.

It’s a situation not lost on Langer.

Five years ago, Smith might have struggled to handle it all.

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He wrote in his book that his idea of handling the scrutiny and pressure as captain was to “push my hands deep into my pockets and squeeze my thumbs hard. I found it offered a little relief for any pent-up feelings”.

No such need now. Married, back at the peak of his powers, and happy.

That’s what some of those close to Smith noted after his first hundred at Birmingham.

He was jeered by plenty of locals, when he started, and when he finished.

But when he reached three figures, there was no emotion other than joy.

No finger-pointing or grimaced “I told you so”. Not this Steve Smith, who has been through it all, and is better than ever.

“Steve Smith came in and showed with his batting how he’s handling it,” Langer said.

“I keep saying this. There’s nothing you can do about that. Just keep smiling.”

And Australia will smile with him.