Steve Smith, Jofra Archer duel transfixes world on day four of Second Ashes Test
Skill. Innovation. And a heap of courage. Steve Smith showed it all on Day 4 at Lord's.
— Wide World of Sports (@wwos) August 17, 2019
Ian Healy will join us on #9SportsSunday to wrap it up | 10am @Channel9#9WWOS #Ashes pic.twitter.com/eJrdJMXYiv
At lunch, the records still seemed to be forming an orderly queue for Smith’s delectation. He had become the first man to accumulate seven consecutive Ashes fifties; he was within sight of becoming the fourth man to register three consecutive Ashes centuries. Australia had lost a solitary wicket in the first session, and the sun was out on a day where the light otherwise fluctuated like an expiring neon tube.
Then came Archer, his international career just two months old, three days into his first Test, from the Pavilion End. Viv Richards famously declined to wear a helmet on grounds that it involved acknowledgement that a bowler was fast, but occasionally would allow that a certain bowler was ‘serious’. Archer is serious. It’s fortunate that the consequences of his spell after lunch were not more so.
The speeds the scoreboard flashed were more reminiscent of a sports car than an English pace bowler: sixteen consecutives were clocked, in cricket’s defiantly imperial way, at in excess of 90mph. The fastest, at 96.1mph, was 155kmh in the new money. Jack Leach’s contrastingly gentle arcs were measured at half that speed.
But you did not need radar to sense the rapidity. Archer’s tightness to the stumps and the gradient of the ground added a serration to his sharp edge: he jagged a ball back that rendered Tim Paine helpless, then released a bouncer that did the same to Jonny Bairstow.
Before the match Australia’s had cast doubt on his stamina, his capacity to sustain velocities amid the hard grind of Test cricket. “I think Justin Langer has another thing coming,” Archer had retorted, and now added deed to word.
Above all, for the first time this series, Smith’s jerks and jives seemed to have more external than internal influences. Archer had Smith playing and missing; Archer had Smith fending; Archer had Smith hooking in the air. At length, he hit Smith’s arm, raising an angry hematoma that required an X-ray. At last, he hit Smith’s neck, laying him out face first.
The innocent days when batsmen shrugged off blows with the shake of the head and the replacement of a helmet are long ago. Nothing has seemed the same since Phillip Hughes was laid to rest, not least for the four occupants of Australia’s dressing room present that fateful day. Nowadays — quite rightly — there is immediate concern. As Smith crumpled, medical staff hurried from both benches. A photograph captured him with his eyes closed. An overhead camera showed him laid out like a flattened fighter in a ring. For a moment the World Test Championship bore a more than passing resemblance to the World Heavyweight Championship.
■ PETER LALOR: Test poised after day of drama
‘Retired hurt’ is one of cricket’s more genteel expressions — it sounds like a polite withdrawal following a mild indisposition, for a cup of tea and maybe an ice pack. As Smith was escorted off for the now mandatory concussion tests, something more like ‘urgent triage’ seemed necessary.
Is this the chink in Smith’s game for which England has been searching? Let’s just say that the ‘serious’ causes every batsman discomfiture, even on a surface as relatively slow as this. Nobody likes it, runs the proverb: it’s just that some show it more than others. But the Australian’s back-and-across step does add a degree of difficulty to evasion, and without the standard rear-facing protection and arm guard, he did seem a tad underdressed. Three years ago Smith sustained a similar blow from Neil Wagner in Christchurch, and was lucky the ball expended itself against his helmet; two weeks ago in Birmingham he was left groggy by Ben Stokes. Smith certainly looked a little peaky three-quarters of an hour later when he resumed on 80 not out, although this is just as likely to have been from the pain in the arm as any bells in his head.
Smith had a drive, a hoick and a hack, padded up to a straight ball and walked, his request for a review more like an adieu. The only anomaly was that the bowler was Woakes. Archer’s spell of 8-2-31-1 reads like a good day’s bowling in a one-day match, his final analysis of 29-11-59-2 sounds in the nature of a containing effort on a shirtfront wicket. But you can no more believe everything you read in the scorebook than you can in the newspaper.
After tea, the Ashes resumed, and excitingly. When we talk of the way luck pervades cricket, we usually have the players in mind, but it applies to spectators too. All those with first day tickets in this Test match got was a refund; those with third day tickets had the afternoon for conversation and conjecture. On fourth days a Test match often idles, gearing up for the denouement. Instead, they went home having enjoyed a jumbo pack of incident containing 90 overs, 10 wickets and 266 runs.
All four English second innings wickets fell from the same end from which Archer bowled, sauce for the gander. Nathan Lyon probed away from the Nursery End, extracting turn, kicking up dust. On the ground where their virile strokeplay inspired England in the World Cup final just over a month ago, Stokes and Jos Buttler deadbatted through the last hour to ensure against an Australian countercoup, and took eagerly for the pavilion when rain dropped in one final time. Tomorrow’s events will bear heavily on the course of these Ashes. They will also pit Steve Smith against Jofra Archer again. After a lot of waiting, a compelling Test match is coming to a head.
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Not often does the promotion of a cricket match, and a Test match at that, condense to the clash of two cricketers. Very seldom indeed does that competition then fulfil the expectation. But for an hour at Lord’s today, Australia and England had second billing, and the Ashes were left to gather dust on the mantelpiece. The duel, amply promised for the preceding week, was afoot: Steve Smith versus Jofra Archer.