The Ashes 2019: Team keeps asking miracles of Steve Smith

Steve Smith of Australia bats as Jonny Bairstow of England keeps wicket during day three of the Edgbaston Ashes Test. Picture: Getty Images

In The Test, his engaging cricket novel, the England team’s statistical analyst Nathan Leamon offers a new and expressive word for a familiar phenomenon. He talks of teams that suffer disastrous early collapses as being ‘gut shot’, like a western gunslinger suffering a mortal wound but taking an agonising age to bleed out.

When they review this First Test, the Australians will have much to rue and to cavil with. Beaten edges. Nicks fallen short. Clouds that scudded in when they batted and cleared when they bowled. Had David Warner reviewed his lbw on the first day or Nathan Lyon his (against Rory Burns) on the second day, balances would certainly have been significantly altered.

Yet from eight for 122 in the middle of the first afternoon, life would have been difficult for a team stronger and more experienced than this. That initial wound has required endless triage, mainly in the form of extraordinary transfusions of runs from Steve Smith. Of him, teammates go on asking miracles. Testament to his skill is that they continue feeling possible.

Smith continued preserving the Australians’ vital spark yesterday. In the field he exuded growing confidence, even proprietorship. At the crease he dismissed a blow on the helmet from Ben Stokes with something like that other line of the gunslinger: ‘Just a flesh wound.’ In their second innings the visitors are loitering palely, pulse thready. But while Smith remains, who knows?

So much was he left to do. To the last ball of Stuart Broad’s second over, Warner flinched in much the same fashion he did here during the World Cup, half-leaving and half-fending with a diagonal bat. The edge this time was not so palpable. Joel Wilson gave the batsman not out, though in the context of these past few days this was a mere preliminary; Broad looked as ambivalent as the slips appeared united; Warner gave partner Cameron Bancroft a non-committal shrug.

Batting is sometimes said to be about making good decisions, but this is really a misnomer, for it implies that the batsman has a range of options from which to rationally choose an option superior to the others. Sports scientists talk instead of an inexpressibly various array of movements of the eyes and head, predictions, adjustments, nods and winks. Indecision, however, is almost always punished — in attack, in footwork, between wickets — and here it was again as a review sent Warner on his way. Bancroft then also tried to multi-task, as it were, advancing on Moeen to disturb the bowler’s length then finding himself between wind and water.

Moeen did struggle with his length, as he had earlier struggled with Nathan Lyon’s line, but Stokes burst through Usman Khawaja’s defence to put a third breach in the Australian top order before the twentieth over.

The stress of Australia’s poor first day had earlier borne on Tim Paine as he tried keeping England’s reply within bounds. The captain without runs to play with is permitted no extravagances; the captain with four specialist bowlers has few options.

The third morning had at first a low hum. The sun shone; England’s lead grew by ticks; the umpires peered periodically at the Duke ball while the Hollies Stand amused themselves with a beach ball, sandpaper momentarily stowed. There were even moments to enjoy the match’s tableau. As Pattinson bowled from the City End, the names and numbers on the backs of the cordon of Warner 31, Bancroft 43 and Smith 49 resembled wanted posters pinned to a sheriff’s wall.

Burns’ edge at last caught up with a passing delivery. There were culpable shots from Stokes and Bairstow and a transfixed non-shot by Moeen. But Woakes with decisive footwork and Broad with a big stride staved Lyon off to prolong the innings beyond lunch. Every now and again still, Broad plays a shot that reminds him how much he used to enjoy batting. Yesterday’s was a sweep struck as sweetly as any stroke in the match.

It took surprisingly long for the usual recourse to bombardment against Broad — the Englishman had not lingered at the crease as long as 108 minutes since his controversially assisted effort at Trent Bridge six years ago. Cummins finally came round the wicket with two fielders in the batsman’s rear view mirror, and the deficit was curtailed at 90. But by the time that deficit was gone, Travis Head was at the crease.

So, of course, was Smith. Before the match, Mark Taylor said that Smith needed a big score to ‘tick the last box’ in his rehabilitation. Having inked that whole box in on the first day, he now started on the other side of the paper, perhaps even more fluently. There seemed no slowing his scoring until Joe Root himself relieved Mooen and plugged some leg-side holes.

England would not wish to chase many more than 200 here, and if anyone is capable of setting them that task it is Smith. He has made a contest of what could otherwise have been a rout. Faced with Australia’s gut shot, he has responded with true grit.