Steve Smith defies Kiwis’ boos and bouncers
The game’s greatest problem solver remained unbeaten despite being booed, bounced and bruised.
Steve Smith was booed. Steve Smith was bounced. Steve Smith was bruised. Steve Smith was denied leg byes on two occasions. Steve Smith argued about it, walked away and returned to argue about it again.
Steve Smith was not the happiest boy at lunch time on Thursday.
Steve Smith is the game’s great problem solver and Steve Smith’s problems were piling up around him during the first session of a Boxing Day Test which started with such promise and concluded with so much left unsaid.
It’s not often you see Smith flustered, but there were signs of it as he left the field for lunch. Twice he’d been hit by New Zealand paceman Neil Wagner, twice he’d run leg byes and twice he’d been sent back because umpire Nigel Llong considered he had not attempted to avoid the ball.
Smith, who had been out twice in Perth playing short balls from Wagner, had stepped inside the ball, angled his back and shimmied, but Llong wasn’t buying the act.
The umpire was well within his rights, Australian batsman — mostly and most egregiously Matthew Wade — had allowed ball after ball to bounce from their bodies in Perth and been granted leg byes when there’d barely been any evasive action taken. The umpires appear to have reflected on this since and resolved that you use your bat, you duck or you will be denied.
The rule states a leg bye can be awarded if the player “attempted to play the ball with the bat or tried to avoid being hit by the ball”.
Smith remonstrated with Llong on the field in the moment and then engaged in a longer debate with the umpire as they left it for the break, walking away at one point and then doubling back to take up the matter again.
It wasn’t a great look, but he had calmed down when the innings resumed and found his way to his first half century since the Ashes — the equal longest dry spell of his career.
“I was just asking the question,” Smith explained after play. “I was trying to get out of the way but it was his interpretation and fair enough, move on.”
Smith was 77no and Australia 4-257 at the close of play, it wasn’t a lot to show for a long time at the wicket, but it leaves Smith and Travis Head (25no) in position to push on should they find a way to break the Black Caps bowlers’ shackles — a task that has proved difficult thus far.
“It takes a lot of patience with the way they have the field set up, it’s different, you can’t really score and taking them on is a big risk,” Smith said after play. “Wagner’s got a big tank but hopefully he has to wear down at some point.”
New Zealand have not played a Test at the MCG for 32 years. It was presumed they would pull Split Enz sized crowds, but this mob are Crowded House sized stadium rock.
Cricket Australia reported ticket sales of around 16,000 in New Zealand alone for the match. The final attendance figure of 80,473 — the second highest outside an Ashes series for Boxing Day — is a great result but a bit awkward as the assumed knowledge across the last three decades was that they were not a major drawcard.
The Kiwi invasion came with unexpected consequences. As David Warner walked off, brilliantly caught in slip by Tim Southee for 41, boos started to overwhelm the gentle Boxing Day applause. When Smith made his way to the middle the ambush was obvious. Boos flooded the ground as they had through the first Tests of the Ashes series.
Smith’s response in England was to score so many runs resistance was futile, those that jeered him at the MCG might be about to learn the same lesson.
Smith said he didn’t hear anything when he walked out. “I’ve learned to block it all out, regardless, good or bad,” he said.
Kane Williamson won the toss and opted to bowl on a surface that was well grassed and under a sky that was grey. The visitors anticipated seam and swing and got both. There was bounce too.
Trent Boult and Tim Southee exploited movement in the air and off the pitch, Wagner explored the outer limits of short ball bowling again and Colin de Grandhomme did whatever it is that he does. Boult bowled three straight ones to Warner before mugging Joe Burns with a text book inswinger that smashed the stumps first delivery he faced. The Queensland batsman has not made the most of the opportunity afforded him this summer.
Boult and Southee’s skill is obvious. Wagner and de Grandhomme not so. The former has found a way of bowling a short ball that seems to mesmerise batsmen. It upsets Smith more than Jofra Archer’s short ball in England. It made a monkey of Matthew Wade in Perth who, like the former captain, finds himself betwixt and between.
And de Grandhomme has a way of inducing stupid shots to deliveries wide and wanting. Wade fell for it, ending an innings that never really began. The same bowler accounted for Marnus Labuschagne when the Australian No 3 had got through a difficult earlier period and brought up another half century — five from five Tests and counting.
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