The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Captain Smith’s patented art of playing spin
IF YOU weren’t well versed with cricket and saw Steve Smith bat for the first time, you might think he had accidentally stepped on an ant-hill. In addition to the constant twitching and the bobbing head, there’s hardly a part of his body that he doesn’t touch or pat before taking strike.
It’s pretty much the antithesis of what you expect from a batsman likely to be successful on a rank turner. The one prerequisite for batting on a notorious spinning track that you hear a lot, after all, is ‘stillness’. To keep the body and head still enough in your stance to then adjust and counter the turn with the suppleness of your hands and feet. Smith, though, can often resemble an energiser bunny on caffeine at the crease. For the record, he taps his bat on the ground 6 to 8 times on an average while facing pace and at least five against spin. He also has the unique trait of shuffling across to spin, something you see being done more against pace.
He did that often while facing R Ashwin in the second innings. He had got out playing the same shot in the first innings. But the scenario had changed. Australia had gained an unexpected advantage — at least in terms of the pre-series predictions — and now was the chance to ram it home. In the past too, Smith’s team had got into positions of strength, but had failed to put the “foot on the throat” of the opposition, as Smith would admit later in the day. And he simply had to put his best foot forward, even if it meant leaving his crease.
Incidentally, one of Australia’s greatest batsmen against spin, Doug Walters, credited this specific mastery to batting in his farm at Dungog where the ball kept pitching on the many ant-hills and turning unpredictably. Smith’s skills against spin were developed in his backyard in Sydney. His father, Peter, would flick all types of balls from offbreaks to leg-breaks to even doosras at the youngster from eight-10 metres out. The young Smith would only have a cut-out bat at his disposal and the rule was he simply couldn’t get out.
“You just had to use your feet. You just had to move forward or back. If you played from the crease you were always in trouble,” the senior Smith had described once.
The Australian captain did use his feet a lot on Saturday. He also played a lot of sweeps, which is uncommon for him, and used the crease to cut or glide every time the Indian spinners pitched it even slightly short. It was his defiance against the turning ball, though, that stood out. In some ways, it must have felt like a throwback to the backyard days, where survival was paramount.
There are two ways to combat spin on a turning wicket, both involve ensuring that the ball doesn’t hit your edge. So basically you need to ensure it either strikes the middle of your bat or just misses it completely. Smith’s technique was rather straightforward. It was to do with the angle in which his bat came down. When the ball turns, the natural instinct is to follow it with your hands. But by putting his front foot straight down the wicket rather than towards the cover region, and bringing his bat down in a straight line, what Smith was making sure was that Jadeja in particular had to be content with the bragging rights of beating his outside edge over and over again. At one point, a frustrated Jadeja even mockingly mimicked Smith’s mannerisms. That’s pretty much the best he could do, for Smith wasn’t giving anything away.
Damien Martyn and Darren Lehmann, Australia’s present coach, had redefined the art of batting against spin in the mid-2000s. Their strategy was based on never committing on the front foot. Smith took a leaf out of their books here. He never lunged forward, therefore nullifying the close-in fielders. He stuck to playing back and playing late, and preferred instead to use his feet whenever there was a need to force the issue. It’s something that the Indian batsmen would fail to replicate when it was their time to bat later on. They kept lunging forward and letting their bats out to dry.
Smith was dropped on numerous occasions. But it was a kind of pitch where you can’t grudge a batsman for his providence, especially when he’s ready to fight it out and dig in for the long haul.
It’s probably the cricketing equivalent of scaling Mt Everest for a batsman from outside the subcontinent, scoring a second-innings century on a turning track in India. It’s not just a test of your physical skills but also your mental fortitude.
And Smith got right to the top, and he did it in his own inimitable fashion.