Anyone who thought Steve Smith’s best batting was behind him only had to watch the recently completed ODI series against England to be disabused of that notion.
His salad days are yet to come.
I have never doubted that Smith is a great player and an intelligent batsman. The match against England in Adelaide only served to confirm both opinions. Smith has completely revamped his batting and believes he is back.
But, I think he is wrong. He is not back: he has just taken a quantum leap forward.
Smith has always been an outlier; his methods unique. He is the best performed Australian batsman outside of Donald Bradman. He has changed the way a generation has approached batting.
However, he has left them hanging, embracing the past to take his batting forward. The generation that followed him down the garden path will have found out that it led to a maze that eventually turned into the batting equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle.
Steve Smith made 94 in the second ODI against England at the SCG.Credit:Getty
If you didn’t have his unique mind and those exquisite hands, the “Smith method” was a black hole that swallowed up even the best young talent. Only Marnus Labuschagne comes close to Smith – in personality, style and ability.
I have no doubt the genesis of the change was Lord’s on August 17, 2019, when Smith was hit a brutal blow to the neck off a Jofra Archer thunderbolt.
Recall that Smith was 80 at that stage. Archer, making his Test debut for England, was bowling briskly from the Nursery End and had just removed Tim Paine to give England the advantage.
The delivery from Archer was almost 150km/h, not that short, and just outside off stump. It climbed quickly and cut back into Smith, who had taken his trademark stride back and across outside off stump. Smith had nowhere to go. Fatefully, he chose to duck.
Smith receives treatment after being hit on the head by a Jofra Archer delivery during the Ashes in 2019.Credit:AP
The scenes that followed were hard to watch. Smith was struck, fell … but, eventually, thankfully, moved. He looked distressed, but keen to carry on. Wiser heads prevailed and he retired hurt, but returned later. After a flurry of boundaries, he was dismissed and became the first person in Test cricket to be subbed out of the game under the new concussion protocol.
Smith’s batting since that day has never quite reached its previous heights. He has often been troubled by good, accurate fast bowling and smart field placings that took away his main scoring areas to short balls.
New Zealand’s Neil Wagner is not express, but extremely accurate, and tied up Smith by bowling back of a length, at his body, with an astute leg-side field. Wagner was able to restrict his run scoring and dismissed him four times in four consecutive innings during the Test series in 2019/20.
What had made Smith great was now working against him. His habitual move back and across, often outside off stump, had distracted bowlers and made him hard to bowl to. But the smarter bowlers kept him contained. They invariably knew where he was going to be before they let the ball go.
Steve Smith has addressed the flaws in his technique, making him a more dangerous batter.
Archer is a handful, anyway. He is quick, accurate and has a brutal bouncer. Wagner, though not in the same class, is very accurate and with a sneakily good bouncer. Those two bowlers made Smith’s life especially difficult.
The Archer blow undoubtedly gave Smith some sleepless nights. Not that that is hard to do. Smith doesn’t sleep much during Test matches and often shadow-bats at odd hours. But this would have kept him awake for different reasons.
In sport, as in business and life, there is no such thing as standing still. Either you are going forward or you are going backwards. The competition is always trying to improve, so you have to keep evolving or get picked off.
Smith plateaued as a batsman and the better teams had found his kryptonite. They were getting him out more cheaply. His Test batting since 2019 was still good although not up to his usual exceptional standards. In 24 Test innings in 2020, ’21 and ’22 he averaged 45 – a precipitous drop from the 70s.
Opposition teams had done their homework and concluded that Smith made most of his runs in a small section of the field, largely on the leg side. Even balls pitching outside off stump would usually be dispatched in an arc from mid-wicket to fine-leg.
However, most bowlers were not good enough to stop Smith scoring for long. Their lengths which caused problems for most batsmen were too short for Smith, who had usually taken an exaggerated stride back just before the bowler delivered the ball. When the better teams and bowlers worked this out, they either pitched up more to him or banged it in chest high, over off stump.
Smith had become predictable. Archer and Wagner were two bowlers who had sussed their man out. Archer had literally stopped him in his tracks.
Smith did not enjoy this fall and must have put a lot of thought into what he needed to do to arrest it. I can’t speak for the process that he went through and who he leaned on for advice, but I love the outcome.
From his sizeable step back and across before the ball left the bowlers’ hand, Smith is now standing still for much longer. At the back-foot landing of the bowler, Smith makes a barely perceptible move onto the ball of his back foot, ready to push forward if the ball is full. If he picks up that the ball is short, he has time to push back.
What this means is he is now waiting until he has picked up the line and length before making a commitment.
Consequently, once the ball leaves the bowler’s hand, he can go to where the ball will be, and he can go forward or back. With his old method, he could only drive balls that were nearly half volleys unless the pitch was particularly flat.
Now, Smith has access to more balls to drive and has opened up 70 per cent or more of the field in which to score, compared to about 30 per cent of the field previously. It also makes him less predictable so bowlers will find it harder to pin him down. More importantly, he will be harder to hit with short balls.
Smith is in his prime as a batter, has a reinvigorated enthusiasm for batting and has finessed a method that gives him more access to the ball and more areas of the ground in which to score. I expect him to make a mountain of runs this summer. It should be fun to watch.
If only Donald Bradman were still alive. He might have suggested a more conventional bottom hand grip – which might have led to even more Bradmanesque feats.
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