For the longest time, Steve Smith in Test cricket was unconquerable. But in 2024, that is no longer the case
What’s worse than a heartbreak?
I’ll give you one: watching one of the GOATs (who also happened to be one of your favourite players), once indomitable and impregnable at their absolute peak, slowly turn human.
You remember their peak like it was yesterday, the time when they were the ultimate main character bossing the universe. You remember how opponents used to tremble at the mere thought of them stepping onto the field.
But that’s no longer the case anymore. They’re now one among the pack. They are unable to touch the heights they did and live up to the standards they set.
And so you slowly come to the realization that there’s a distinct possibility that things might or will never be the same again. As this reality sinks in, you’re hit by a wave of sorrow that’s impossible to shrug off.
For the longest time, Steve Smith in Test cricket was unconquerable. He was at least three levels above every other batter in the world, including his “Fab Four” counterparts. When Smith stepped onto the field, it was over for the opposition even before it began. The bowlers, the conditions, the situation — none of it mattered. At his peak, Smith batting Australia to victory was a certainty in life.
But we’re in 2024, and that is no longer the case.
For one, Smith doesn’t average 60 in Tests anymore. Smith’s Test average touched 60 for the first time in February 2016, and it peaked at a ridiculous 64.81 in September 2019. Despite occasionally fluctuating, the average stayed over 60 till June 2023, by which point he’d played a whopping 97 Tests.
But he will enter the forthcoming Border-Gavaskar Trophy with his average reading an ‘ordinary’ 56.97, the lowest it has been in nine years. 2014 was the last time Smith started a BGT with his Test average not reading at least 60.00. It will take time to get used to the fact that there’s no longer a ‘60’ next to the right-hander’s name.
That Smith will enter this BGT with his average being closer to 50 than to 65 for the first time in a decade is because of the un-robotification of his batting.
At his peak, Smith was indeed a robot. He was called smudgebot for a reason.
His stance and his shuffle cried for the fast bowlers to target his pads because he was a goner if he missed. And for about half a decade, every single fast bowler in the world tried to do just that.
And yet the plan NEVER worked because Smith just did not miss.
“This time we’ll succeed, surely,” is what James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Chris Woakes, and others told themselves for about seven years between 2013 and 2020 as they kept targeting his pads……..only to come out second-best every single time.
Maybe we took those days of Smith’s invincibility in front of stumps for granted. Because it’s 2024 and well, Smith getting dismissed LBW has rather sadly become a common sight.
In the last Test he played, in Christchurch against New Zealand, Smith got pinged in front of the stumps twice. It was only the third time in his career, and the first time in a decade, he’d been dismissed LBW twice in the same Test.
In a four-year period between 2016 and 2019, Smith only fell LBW to pace six times in 34 Tests. Since June 2023, across 13 Tests, he’s been trapped LBW by the quicks the same number of times. This figure is three already in 2024 in just five Tests; four in six red-ball games if you include the Scott Boland dismissal that happened in the Sheffield Shield last month.
At his peak, Smith ALWAYS made starts count. If he got his eye in, it was pretty much over for the opponent.
Between 2014 and 2019, Smith crossed the 30-run mark 63 times in Tests. Out of those 63 thirties, 47 turned out to be 50-plus scores. He converted 24 of those thirties into hundreds (38%) and posted a score of 70 or more a staggering 35 times. Point is, he rarely squandered a start.
These days, he’s rarely making a start count. Since 2023, Smith has passed the 30-run mark 16 times. Only three of these thirties have been converted into tons. The number of times he’s turned these thirties into at least a 70? Five.
Forget the thirties, between 25 and 49 alone, Smith has been dismissed 12 times since 2023.
It’s been hard to process but the run-machine version of Smith has not been on show for at least a solid couple of years.
The last time we saw Smith close to his best in Tests, across an extended period and not just in patches, was between mid-July 2022 and Jan 2023, where, in a 10-innings period, he amassed 631 runs at an average of 90.14, smashing two tons and an unbeaten double hundred.
Since then, he’s averaged 37.07 across 17 Tests, with him struggling to go big outside the World Test Championship (WTC) final against India and the Lord’s Ashes Test against England. We’ve also had all the opening drama during this period, but that’s now settled.
So, where does Smith’s Test career go from here? What does the future, more importantly, the immediate future in the form of the BGT, hold for him? That’s the one question that’s equally exciting and terrifying.
If we are to go by what he’s been doing of late, not just in Tests but across formats, we can probably expect a middling series with a few promising starts and a couple of very good knocks but nothing more. That’s been a recurring pattern with Smith in both Tests and ODIs in the past year; we saw this in the 50-over World Cup as well as The Ashes. Should this pattern continue, it would be disappointing but not surprising.
Coming to the exciting part: what if he ends up having a second wind and puts together an outstanding series? Recent trends suggest that’s unlikely, but great players should never be written off for a reason. In the past, there have been GOATs who have entered big tournaments in much worse form at a much older age and have ended up producing some of their best-ever cricket.
There’s nothing definitive to suggest Smith isn’t capable of the same.
He might be past his peak, but the right-hander’s knock against West Indies at the Gabba earlier this year and the ton he scored in the WTC Final are proof enough that the 35-year-old still has it in him to summon his best cricket. He’s done it in patches in the past 18 months or so; the challenge for him will be to string them together and make it a series to remember.
And then there’s the terrifying part. What if the end is near? What if everything ends up falling apart in one series?
Smith’s hand-eye coordination was his biggest strength during his peak, but that same strength has been letting him down of late.
Is it the age factor finally coming into play? He’s misjudging more deliveries. He’s been beaten on the inside edge off the seam a lot more. He is nicking deliveries he would never have nicked six or seven years back. He’s been comprehensively ‘defeated’ as a batter more times in the past 18 months than he was in the golden five-year period between 2014 and 2019.
Numbers prove this but when you watch Smith these days, you no longer feel the sense of security you felt while you watched him bat a few years ago. It feels like there’s an underlying vulnerability waiting to trip him, even in games where he gets off to a very confident start.
So what if he endures a series so bad that it signals that the end is all but near?
The possibilities are endless, and nobody knows what the (immediate) future holds. Which is one of the things that make sport the beautiful phenomenon it is.
Regardless of what the future holds, though, buckle up. This might very well be the penultimate – if not last – Australian summer where we’re curious about what’s in store from the bat of Steven Peter Devereux Smith.
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