Steve Smith is the man of the century

They will know this as the Steve Smith Test. The other players just courtiers in his royal presence.

Australia’s Steve Smith kisses the badge on his helmet as he celebrates his second century in the first Ashes Test at Edgbaston. Picture: AFP

They will know this as the Steve Smith Test. The result will be a footnote, the other 21 participants just courtiers in his royal presence. His scores cannot be ignored, but it is the context that has made them so compelling.

They may also know the Edgbaston game, Test No 2353, as the first in a series where the Australians confirmed that the way they play cricket changed dramatically.

Nobody can predict the future, but the landscape since South Africa — the game’s black swan moment — is not the same and may never be again.

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The cultural shift in approach was demanded, is profound and has gone so far it’s made some former greats distinctly uncomfortable. You just shouldn’t be that easy in each other’s company.

There may be some alive who can remember a time similar but it has been a long, long time since an Australian Test side played a game in the spirit these men have played this one in.

You’d be hard stretched to find a club game with such spitfires of bonhomie. You wouldn’t find a Sheffield Shield match so social.

There was, without a hint of hyperbole, more sledging and sneering in the tour game between the two Australian sides in Southampton a week earlier than there has been in Edgbaston.

Where the South African series that led to the great catastrophe of Cape Town was a series of bin fires this has been mostly toasting marshmallows.

Nice is the new nasty. And it’s unsettling for some. More of that later, Smith first because, well, his performance is Himalayan, all else foothills hills on the horizon.

Smith's Ashes attack on record books

Achievements in sport are like real estate. Three things matter. Location, location and location.

The things that gives them gravity or robs them of it are where it happened. If it’s an Ashes series, it matters. If it isn’t, it matters less.

There’s a scale, sure, India’s a good place to own some property and if you got in that market you’re investment has had a handy return, but it’s still not ocean frontage. South Africa has some cache, but there’s no public transport and you can’t park your car on the street. Anywhere else and basically you’re camping. New Zealand are a great team and provide great local conflict, but the harsh reality is that, in Australia’s cricket history, it is only that.

If Shane Warne had bowled the Gatting ball in the first match of a series against any other country it would be a moment remembered only by those who worship the game and its history and those determined to win the meat tray at pub trivia.

It was an incredibly delivery, but he bowled a few of those. There was one preposterous ball to Shivnarine Chanderpaul and a flipper to Richie Richardson that are up there. Warne even says the first of those was better, but acknowledges it did not have the context of an Ashes series. The Gatting ball was — stop me if you’ve heard this before — his first in an Ashes Test.

Smith’s centuries aren’t his first, they are his 24th and 25th. They’re not his largest either, both are 150-odd runs shy of that and they were not achieved in the most impossible of physical conditions, the Pune hundred was that.

Steve Smith of Australia is presented with the player of the match award during day five of the Ashes Test between England and Australia at Edgbaston.

They have beauty because of their symmetry. A double in an Ashes is not achieved that often and it was worth noting that one of the two other living Australians who have done it, Steve Waugh, was on hand to see it done again.

They are singular in some ways, for they were the first since the events in Cape Town and have been received like the first lungful of air when you’ve been held under for too long by the surf.

He was a little taken aback when an English journalist asked if he was relieved to find he could bat again. Smith admits there were thoughts in the dark times that he might not want to, but the idea he would no longer be able to bat as he did was almost an insult: “I’ve never doubted my ability. But, it’s kind of a dream comeback in a way. To be able to score two hundreds in a match, in the first Ashes match, it’s something I have never done before. It’s special.”

He tamed the savage beast too, beating the Edgbaston mob into submission. They still booed when he walked to the wicket on day four but by the time he made his hundred and walked from the ground all but a foolish few had applauded his brilliance.

They came to bury Smith, not to praise him, but praise him they eventually did.

There is a long history of enmity for Australian teams in world cricket. The Indians and South Africans have held them in such contempt they have rejected the offer of drinks in series not so distant.

Things have changed. Smith and Stuart Broad chatted on day four even though the game hung in the balance. Travis Head chatted to Jason Roy and Joe Denly about the weather on day three.

It was Ian Chappell who berated Allan Border before the 1989 series about being too friendly with opponents. That directive was taken to its extreme in the year’s leading to the South African series. Some are wondering if there’s been an overcorrection.