Ashes 2023: The partial eclipse of Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne

Steven Smith, left, and Marnus Labuschagne at the crease. Picture: AFP

Smith and Labuschagne. Labuschagne and Smith. Whichever way you order the crack Australian pair, by seniority or alphabet, they almost deserve a portmanteau nickname a la Bennifer and Hiddleswift: SmithoSchagne or MarnuSmudge.

It’s not just we who elide them; they do themselves. When in proximity, they reputedly do everything together; when apart, these cricket savants reportedly talk every day, at length, and not about the situation in Ukraine or their prize geraniums. They discuss batting, at such a level of granularity that they might as well be speaking in tongues.

They have been discussed in relation to one another ever since that unforgettable interlude four years ago when Labuschagne substituted for a concussed Smith at Lord’s, coming to stay. In recent times, the pair have formed the spinal column of Australian batting: second and third on the ICC Test rankings, and the only batters of their generation to explore the far side of a 60 average.

So tightly have they tracked one another, in fact, that there is a certain piquancy about their slight but parallel eclipse in these Ashes. It’s relative, of course, rather than abject: after all, Smith was man-of-the-match at Lord’s. But their failures at Headingley have given England an excellent chance in a compelling and intriguing Test.

Steve Smith leaves the field. Picture: Getty

Labuschagne, as has been his recent wont, made two starts, only to nick off in the first innings and hole out in the second essaying a slog sweep – only the sixth such shot he has played in his Test career, and the third time he has been dismissed.

Smith’s hundredth Test has been a strange affair. In the first innings, having uncharacteristically wellied an early six, he uncharacteristically reviewed a caught behind verdict when he had clearly hit the ball; second time round, he picked out a short mid-wicket hitting across a ball tossed into the breeze, then took unnecessary offence at a very mild quip from Bairstow.

Labuschagne has now made one half-century in his last sixteen starts, which was in the second innings of the Ahmedabad Test on a pitch where they could still be playing.

What’s been a wrinkle in his career, moreover, has gradually become a fold: his home record (2397 runs at 70) is more or less twice his away record (1028 runs at 36). Some observers this Ashes have noted him crowding off stump; others have critiqued his overeagerness to get bat on ball.

Four years ago, meanwhile, nothing short of a blow on the conk could stop the mighty Smith. His Test average peaked at 65, built on twenty-six hundreds. Since then, with bowlers testing him out on shorter lengths and leg-side lines, he has reverted a little to the mean, averaging 46, with half a dozen hundreds more. Still formidable but closer to mortal.

At the top of summer, Smith reintroduced to his set-up the back-and-across step he had briefly discarded. But especially at Edgbaston, England troubled him by coming wide of the crease, and two indeterminate innings were the result.

So what is amiss? Is it technique? Is it the familiarity of their methods to observant rivals? Or is it something more akin to a short circuit or a flipped switch?

Like a cricket washing machine and/or tumble dryer, Labuschagne and Smith consume an outsize amount of energy. Perhaps in drawing so heavily on the grid, they’ve burned a fuse or two.

Labuschagne this summer seems to have lacked his signature vitality. Missing have been that mark-of-Zorro leave, that parade ground bark of ‘No run!’, and those gassy short leg monologues, for all of which Labuschagne used to be rather mocked, but which coincided with his signal phase of success.

The World Test Championship final provided the curious sight of Labuschagne having a siesta as he waited to go into bat. Oh Marnus! How we laughed. But maybe it was a leading indicator.

Marnus Labuschagne reacts after being caught by Harry Brook. Picture: Getty

Smith, of course, never presents as other than a fascinating study on the field, with all his tics and his twitches, his early seeing and late playing. But there may also be something significant about his regimen off the field.

During Test matches, Smith is a notoriously terrible sleeper, often playing at the brink of exhaustion. In his recent book Not Out (2021), Greg Chappell described coming across Smith in the middle of a big hundred in Perth, sitting on a physiotherapist’s table staring sightlessly into space and looking like a ‘shell of a man’.

When Chappell remarked on this, Smith complained: ‘Oh mate, I’m gone. I can’t sleep, I’m not eating….During a Test match I can’t do anything. All I can do is play cricket and stagger back to my room.’

Now that Smith is thirty-four, there is some empirical evidence that the deeper a match goes, the less Smith is a factor. His averages across the four innings of Test matches are, respectively, 86, 55, 43 and 28 [dash] quite a pronounced tapering given the sample size of a century of five-day games.

His summer has also fallen in to something like that pattern. In the World Test Championship final, after a few months off, Smith batted with sublime control, only to fail in the Edgbaston Test that followed hard on that match’s heels.

Smith then looked fresh and free in the Lord’s Test, but has failed here after another three-day turnaround. Early English dawns and late dusks are always a challenge for visiting Australians. And as any new parent will tell you, not even a Leeds barber demands repayment so urgently as a sleep debt.

These days we have so much data at our disposal, such comprehensive analytical tools and such brilliant interpreters and expositors among our commentariat that we incline towards examining the modern batter as a kind of automata. They are doing this; they are not doing that; this is what the coaches will be saying.

Why rather than how a player loses their way is far harder to answer. But even those as accomplished as Labosteve are mere flesh and blood.