SYDNEY: Steve Smith has broken English hearts and smashed
records with his phenomenal Ashes batting and is being acclaimed as the
best Australian batsman since the greatest of all, Don Bradman.
That
is rarefied company for the quirky 28-year-old skipper, who led
Australia to reclaiming the Ashes with an imperious 239 — his highest
Test score — in Australia’s mammoth first innings 662 for nine declared
in the third Perth Test victory on Monday.
Ashes-winning
skipper Smith has almost single-handedly batted Joe Root’s team out of
the series, accumulating 426 runs in just four innings at an average of
142, which allowed his bowlers to do the rest.
Smith,
whose idiosyncratic style — moving across his stumps as the bowler
delivers — flies in the face of cricket’s purists, has a career average
of 62.32 from 59 Tests.
That places him second only in Test history to Bradman, whose average of 99.94 at the pinnacle was forged from 1928-48.
Records
have tumbled for the cricket-obsessive Smith, who broke into the Test
arena as a leg-spin bowling all-rounder batting at number eight in 2010.
Since then Smith has reeled off the milestones to draw comparison with the greatest batsman the game has ever seen.
He has amassed 22 Test centuries, 14 of them in 29 Tests as captain. Bradman made 14 hundreds in 24 Tests as skipper.
Smith is only the fifth Australian captain, one of them being Bradman, to have scored two Ashes double hundreds.
Rival
skipper Root has tried everything during the current series to dislodge
Smith, to get him out of his ‘bubble’, but to little effect.
Over the 15 days of the one-sided series Smith has batted for more than three full days. He has simply been the difference.
Much
has been said about Smith’s unconventional batting technique, in some
ways similar to Bradman, who would bring his bat down in a rotary
movement.
Smith is similarly unique and possesses
rapier-like reflexes. He rarely hits the ball in the air, cutting down
risk and making him even harder to set fields against.
“You
wouldn’t coach a young player to hold a bat like he does with such a
strong bottom hand or move around quite as much,” said ex-England
captain Nasser Hussain. “But when his bat comes down in contact with the
ball it is full face and his hand-eye coordination is just phenomenal.”
Former Australia captain Mark Taylor added: “At the
moment his bat looks six-foot wide. Smith has got an insatiable appetite
for runs. You can see when he bats, he gets in that little bubble.”
Such
is Smith’s attention to detail that he gets his fiancee Dani Willis to
act as a bowling-machine operator in their backyard for extra batting
practice.
“He sets everything up and I just load the balls,” she revealed.
Smith is a notorious fidgety character while at the batting crease.
Host
broadcaster Channel 9 counted 23 different ticks, fidgets and movements
by him during his routine preparation before facing the bowler.
Other maverick moments have come to light during the Ashes series.
At
a Perth drinks break while Smith was batting in his 399-ball epic, team
support staff brought a chair onto the WACA Ground so Smith could sit
down — not to rest, but redress.
As with tennis
superstar Rafael Nadal’s fastidious obsession with the precise placement
of his water bottles by his courtside chair, Smith also has a
peculiarity where he is distracted by the sight of his shoelaces.
