Ex-skipper rides to rescue of his ‘tamper’ mates with stunning ton
that he failed to review the leg-before decision Broad extracted from umpire Aleem Dar.
Hawk-Eye suggested it would have missed leg stump. That has got to hurt like a Brillopad carelessly concealed down your jockstrap.
But Smith, who dissolved into tears when he was stripped of the captaincy, would not be moved.
“You’re going to cry in a minute,” sang the Brummie choir – yet here was a reminder why Smith averages 90 in the first innings of Test matches.
If the pantomime villain soundtrack which followed him to the middle was all part of the funfair, booing a bloke who carves out a brilliant century from the ruins of 122-8 is plain naff.
England love playing at Edgbaston because the crowd is more rock ’n’ roll than the London Symphony Orchestra decorum of Lord’s.
But there is no excuse for the boorish, bovine nonsense which greeted Smith’s century.
Sandpaper or not, he served his ban. Get a life and get over it.
Five centuries in his past seven Ashes Tests is some going – now grow up and learn some manners.
When the Aussies were eight down, England’s slip cordon was large enough to form a dance troupe on Top of the Pops.
Smith’s rotation of the strike was so masterful that he had dispersed it altogether by the time ninth-wicket partner Peter Siddle was winkled out by Moeen Ali.
If the rout England sensed turned into an exercise in frustration, at least they remembered to rub the Aussies’ noses in some nostalgia they would prefer to forget.
At lunchtime, eight heroes of the 2005 Ashes-winning side – Michael Vaughan, Andrew Strauss, Ian Bell, Paul Collingwood, Geraint Jones, Matthew Hoggard, Ashley Giles and Steve Harmison – took a lap of honour. And the Australian middle order appeared to be spooked by the procession, notably skipper Tim Paine, who pulled Broad gormlessly to Rory Burns at deep square leg.
It was a dismissal reminiscent of ‘happy hooker’ Andrew Hilditch’s reckless misadventure on this ground in 1985: Pay attention, this is your captain sinking. By the time Smith’s onslaught had sprayed graffiti all over England’s inroads, however, Root’s tactics had been reduced to the language of surrender – a ring of nine men on the boundary. The Aussies’ 284 could take some matching – and Smith’s 144 has set the bar formidably high for the innings of the series.