When would you ever write off Steve Smith? Not now!
After his shadow batting in his hotel room went viral on social media, Steve Smith’s real batting was even better in a timely return to form against India.
I can imagine doing what Steve Smith did on the eve of the SCG Test. I can totally imagine being such a bright-eyed slave to cricket that I grab my bat and gaze at it adoringly and then play a couple of shadow backfoot cover drives in my hotel room while a Sydney Sixers’ BBL game is on the TV screen behind me.
I imagine doing a Smith and thinking you know what, I’m going the whole hog. Darl, fetch me my whites. I imagine ditching the jim-jams and getting in the Australia Test kit and punching a majestic if imaginary boundary through the off, conveniently forgetting that India’s bowlers will try to strangle me with packed leg-side fields and offerings almost exclusively directed at the stumps. But there’s one thing Smith did that I can’t imagine doing. I can’t imagine letting my missus post it on social media. When the request was lodged by the trouble and strife, I imagine cringing and saying what Smith usually hollers when there’s no single to be had. Not now!
The fact Smith was tickled so appropriately pink by the SCG Test that he was behaving like a kid with a new bat was no surprise. Perhaps the only real shock was that he dragged himself away from the BBL coverage just long enough to do it. The really endearing part was that instead of begging his wife, Dani Willis, to keep it private – what happens in a Sydney hotel room during isolation should stay in a Sydney hotel room during isolation, love – Smith was more than happy for it to be published. Cue the tittering and the good-natured sledging, but also the latest evidence of one of his finer attributes. There’s rarely been an open book like him.
He ventured onto the SCG on Thursday after scores against India of one, one not out, which had improved his average no end, nought and eight. A rut would become a full-blown slump if there was another failure. He hustled out with great expectation and purpose after wild Will Pucovski had made 62 with the sort of controlled aggression – and hairstyle – paraded by Mark Occhilupo at Bells Beach in the 1980s. For the next decade or more, knock yourself out, kid. You know what we mean.
Smith was no longer the Australian batsman with the highest Test average. Pucovski had him covered by a run. From the outset, the obsessive Smith had more twitches and nervous tics than Rafael Nadal, doing everything other than picking the undies from his bum and shouting vamos. He pushed his second ball to mid-on for a brisk single. Three of his first half-dozen balls were sent to the rope with strokes worthy of his hotel Morrow. The difference from his laborious outings at Adelaide and Melbourne?
The intent. The palpable desire to get on with it. At heart and at his best, he’s no poker and prodder. When he charged his nemesis, Ravi Ashwin, and belted him straight for a thunderous four, Australia’s biggest gun had, well, all his own guns blazing. He was a thrill a minute again. A valuable contributor again. His real batting was better than his shadow batting again. He headed back to his hotel room on an unbeaten 31. Keep going and who knew? Some day he might end up with a better Test average than Pucovski. When would you ever write him off? Not now!
He said: “I wouldn’t say I was aggressive. I was positive. Nice to sort of free things up a little bit.” Told he was hitting the pitch with his bat so sledgehammer hard it seemed he wanted to put a hole in it, Smith replied: “I’ve been working on a few things. Just trying to hold my bat a bit tighter. I’ve sort of been struggling a bit with my wrist. Now I’ve got that back, I can hit the bat a bit harder. Things were going nicely for me. It was nice to get a few boundaries off early and hopefully it was a good. Day for Australia and we can keep it going tomorrow.”
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