Ashes 2019: Steve Smith is back but he’s not done yet

For followers of the Australian team so far this summer, one sound has been constant. Clop, clop, clop: it has been the sound of Steve Smith at practice.

For months, he has been wearing out bowlers’ shoulders and throwers’ arms alike. You sense that even the bowling machines are tired. But Smith on his long journey back has found consolation and outlet in the monotony of repetition. If he was told he had a day to live, he would probably spend half of it in the nets.

For a batsman gone so long without a Test innings, then, Smith could hardly have been readier than when he emerged with Australia two for 17 yesterday. What must have been the longest 18 months of his young life was made for Ashes watchers to seem like the shortest: the strokes, the security and the mannerisms were all much as Smith left off last year in Sydney, as if his exile had been a mere ellipsis.

MORE: How the match unfolded — Epic century highlights drama-filled day | Peter Lalor reports how Steve Smith nearly quit cricket

Nothing is inevitable about any Test century: it needs a setting of support, a vanguard of luck. But after Smith’s first hour, the evitability contracted markedly. All he needed was someone to stick with him. This proved harder to find than it should have — his countrymen had a technically challenged day.

Australia's Steve Smith celebrates his century on the opening day of the first Ashes cricket Test match between England and Australia at Edgbaston in Birmingham.

In Australia, the bowler’s G-spot is fourth stump, leaving the bat, menacing the outside edge; in England, it is nearer the batsman’s knee roll, skidding in to defeat the inside edge. The visitors had been reminded of this only recently: a third of the wickets in their warm-up match at Southampton fell lbw. They took the admonition to train as you mean to play literally: here it was five out of 10.

David Warner, at least, seemed to intuit the risk, looking in the opening overs to sneak down the pitch, which attracted the intervention of Aleem Dar, and to creep over to off stump, luring Stuart Broad into an overexcited review. But thus unmoored, Warner accepted Dar’s next lbw verdict without demur, despite the same bowler’s 196cm and round-the-wicket angle. A humblebrag, some thought, although maybe also the confounding sense that accompanies doing exactly what one wished to avoid.

Whatever the case, nobody profited by the example, batsman after batsman loitering round the crease as though there was a tax on playing forward — Pattinson even emulated Warner by modestly declining a review that would have reprieved him. When Peter Siddle played a few stiff-armed but simple front foot defensive shots just before tea, played straight, getting a nice stride in, it seemed almost revolutionary.

The seam movement was challenging, but no more so than on any first day pitch in England. Tim Paine can hardly be blamed for his choice of innings on winning the toss, although his overeager tow to back square leg was a self-inflicted wound.

Smith, as often, seemed oblivious to others’ struggles. There was the familiar sense that his method should not really work — that colossal cross step that screens the stumps, that pick up that wafts towards point like a divining rod. But work it does, and England proved no closer to stalling its mechanics than they were in 2017-18.

Steve Smith is congratulated by Nathan Lyon after reaching his century.

Smith’s first 92 was a steady progress of 176 deliveries; his last 52 took a lickety-split 43 balls, with eight fours, two sixes and umpteen singles strategically declined. Bowled at last, he pelted off the field almost forgetting to acknowledge the ovation. Perhaps he wanted a few more throwdowns.

The long-suffering but deserving bowler was Broad, securing a timely five-for. Last seen in Australia, he had looked like a machine for removing the shine from new balls, beating a tattoo on the middle of bats.

Yesterday, as at Lord’s, he looked rejuvenated, arms and legs pumping, probing away at a full length, prepared to countenance being driven; he was busy in the field also, chasing a Khawaja drive hard from mid-off, diving to deprive Smith of a boundary at deep fine leg.

The tang of rivalry? At 33, perhaps for the first time in his career, Broad faces speedy competition for his place, from Jofra Archer, Olly Stone, Mark Wood — although not, for the time being at least, from his old mucker James Anderson.

Was it imagination, or did Anderson appear a little ginger in the warm-ups, as if trying to run in on one leg? Beating the bat in the first half hour, he turned perfunctorily on his heel; peeling away after four overs, he took his sweater quietly; receiving attention at drinks, he was thought at first to suffering a sore hand.

It was not like Glenn McGrath toppling cumbrously in the warm-ups here 14 years ago; it may yet have consequences as far reaching. At first England covered his absence adequately. As the ball softened after tea, Joe Root would love to have had his services.

Australian players celebrate as Steve Smith reached his century at Edgbaston.

It should not go unremarked that for the first time in a Test, names and numbers were to be seen on players’ backs — another stealth idiocy from the propeller heads in ‘fan engagement’, marring one of the game’s most charming uniquenesses. As if the concept was not sufficiently silly, its execution was perfectly half-hearted: the typography had all the quality of a transfer ironed on by your mum; because the jumpers were unsullied, some players seemed to be going incognito.

If an identification system was genuinely necessary in Test cricket, names alone would surely suffice. In a cricket context, the numbers are pointless, even confusing, signifying nothing except the game’s trend towards an enfeebling mimickry of other sports. It all made about as much sense as deciding a global cricket trophy by the number of boundaries scored.

Fortunately, Test cricket again proved its own best advertisement, the Australians securing an authority in the match undreamed of at eight for 122. They may take some catching now. And out the back of any Test ground you visit this summer, cock an ear for a clop, clop, clop. Steve Smith is not done yet.