Paine and Smith’s curious Test journey

The Australian skipper and his predecessor have walked different paths since their debuts

Former Australian captain Steve Smith, left, and his successor Tim Paine train together in Southampton last week. Picture: Getty Images

When Tim Paine wakes this morning he will take the Australian Test captain’s blazer from the hanger in his hotel room and make his way to the team bus where the 46th man ever to lead his side will ride to the ground with, among others, his predecessor, the 45th.

Steve Smith’s jacket was impounded when he was indicted amid a controversy the scale of which the US President of the same number is familiar with but immune to.

It’s a short trip from the hotel in the heart of Birmingham to the hostilities of the Edgbaston Ground, but it is a long strange trip both Paine and Smith have been on.

The trajectory of their careers have intersected and diverged.

Smith’s trip was the smoother of the two until he ran a red light and found himself flying through a windscreen. Paine’s the more eccentric, as if he charted his way to the ground via narrow boat on the city’s obscure and intriguing system of canals.

Their Test careers began nine years and 200km from Edgbaston, at Lord’s, in an out-of-place series against Pakistan on the same date in 2010.

Paine filling in for an absent Brad Haddin. Smith, batting at eight and in the side for his leg spin, was the oddest of selections. He didn’t get a bowl in the first innings, but took three later in the game.

They batted together in the second innings, defying the disconcerting slope for five-and-a-bit overs, Smith departing first for 12 runs after making just one in the first innings. Paine falling three short of a Test 50.

If this was a movie that would be an edit point before the story picked up again years later.

Smith had just celebrated his 21st birthday. Paine was a baby-faced 25. Both looked so young they would have had to take proof of age when the side went for drinks after the match.

It proved a false start for the hopeful pair. Smith wasn’t going to make it bowling wrist spin and any chance Paine had of gazumping Haddin was dashed when his finger was broken batting in a fundraising match for the players association.

Terry Jenner suggested at the time that Smith’s advance to the top level needed to be slowed but predicted there was better to come. “As a leggie, you have to have the good times in the memory bank so you can cope in the bad. You need patience,” the then coach said.

“I’ve got a good feeling about Steve Smith, but it’s a 23 or 24-year-old Steve Smith, not the current one.”

Jenner didn’t live to see how right his prediction was — even if it was for the wrong reasons.

Four years after that debut, Martin Crowe named Smith as one of the future “Fab Four” of batsmen — alongside Virat Kohli, Joe Root and Kane Williamson — who would rotate through the very top of the ICC rankings in years to come.

“Smith started slowly — it took 23 innings for him to score his first century,” Crowe wrote for Cricinfo. “He has since struck three centuries in his last 15 innings and looks solid at five, and has a chance to learn and build even further, batting behind Michael Clarke.

“Initially he looked anxious and fidgety, lacking a still position when watching the ball. But on realising that footwork and body position are the cornerstones to successful batting, he now seems comfortable playing home or away, against pace or spin, off front or back foot.”

Crowe lived long enough to see his prediction filled and the batsman elevated to captain his side after Clarke’s post-2015 Ashes retirement, but not long enough to see Smith stripped of the Test captaincy and banned for 12 months last year.

Paine briefly kept his place behind the stumps for Australia’s 2010 series against India and promised to stay there for some time when he got a half century at Bengaluru and narrowly missed a century at Mohali.

It was bitter comedy then that it was broken fingers from batting injuries that restricted his advance over the next few years, to the point where he was fading from the game when pulled from oblivion and handed a place in the 2017-18 Ashes side.

Paine did not play Test cricket for 2601 days and if his return was agonisingly slow his next phase moved at a speed that defies measure.

He pulled the Baggy Green back on in November and was elevated to captaincy in March.

His unforeseen elevation meant the first day he captained an Australian team it was a casual affair at the toss. The tailor had no time to measure him for a jacket and it would have been inappropriate to, in the manner of city limit signs in country towns after a birth, have daubed a Plus One in dripping paint on 45.

There will be a lot on each player’s mind as the bus drives from the hotel to the ground. Both will be thinking about the looming moment and will have learnt from their curious journeys to it.

Good luck predicting what their futures hold.