Warner’s woes only highlight dominance of team-mate
Opener’s struggles are every bit as one-sided as remarkable feats of Smith, writes Tim Wigmore
As the evening shadows crept onto the Old Trafford outfield, Steve Smith backed away and pulled Stuart Broad between mid-on and midwicket. One of the fielders who this shot of breathtaking chutzpah bisected was England captain Joe Root, who could be seen lying on the ground: a cricketer literally and figuratively brought to the floor by the simple majesty of Smith.
The next ball, Broad, a bowler with 463 Test wickets in the midst of the second-best year of his Test career, thought Smith would back away once again. So he bowled well wide of leg stump, attempting to cramp Smith for room. Only, this time Smith had shuffled far across to the off side. Broad was bowling at a ghost. The ball hurtled past Jonny Bairstow for five wides.
At the end of the over, Smith swatted another four through mid-on. After more than 24 hours at the crease this Ashes series, this was another manifestation of Smith’s staggering gifts. He was treating the England attack as if he was playing garden cricket.
Smith now has 671 runs at 134.20 apiece this Ashes series, and two of
those five dismissals were setting up declarations. With one Test to go, he needs 304 runs at the Oval to top Don Bradman’s 1934 tally of 974 runs, the highest ever in a Test series. Without the encumbrance of missing three innings with concussion, Smith could well have topped Bradman’s haul of 85 years ago.
With that second audacious pull in the over against Broad, Smith reached 81. For Smith, this was no landmark at all in a series brimming with them. Yet that figure had a curious significance for it meant that Smith now had more runs than David Warner in the series, Australia’s other front-rank returnee after a 12-month suspension because of the events in Cape Town. The statistic is even more arresting because Warner has had three more innings than Smith. In its own way, Warner’s series haul of 79 runs at 9.87, indeed, seem almost as outlandish as Smith’s figures.
The chasm in their series run tallies has been reflected in how they have been received by the English crowds. With each Smith landmark, English fans have become more appreciative of his other-worldly gifts, the proportion of boos to cheers rapidly ticking downward. All the while, each Warner failure has been greeted with ever more glee.
In the first innings at Headingley, Warner made a battling 61, and then followed it up with four fine slip catches in England’s ignominious 67 all out. Warner’s swagger was back and, assuredly, the runs would follow. Yet this apparent moment of strut regained was the prelude to three consecutive ducks, each to Stuart Broad bowling round the wicket.
Broad has single-handedly turned Warner’s return to the Test team into a dud. Until this summer, Warner had generally been ascendant in their tussle, averaging 65 against Broad and only being dismissed twice.
But before this series, Broad hatched a fresh plan to attack Warner with the new ball. Against Warner in 2015, when he did not dismiss him at all, Broad bowled predominantly over the wicket to him, aiming to get him out driving. This time, Broad has switched to round the wicket to Warner – from 41 per cent of his balls being round the wicket to Warner in 2015, every single one has been round the wicket in 2019. The line of attack means that Broad can simultaneously attack Warner’s edge and – as he did by getting him trapped lbw on the back foot at the end of the first over of Australia’s second innings – his stumps too.
The upshot has been a contest the antithesis of that between Smith and England’s bowlers, and yet every bit as one-sided. Broad has bowled 92 deliveries to Warner this series, conceding just 32 runs while claiming his wicket six times. Only five batsmen in Test history – the most recent Moeen Ali against Nathan Lyon in the 2017/18 Ashes – have ever been dismissed more times by one bowler in one series.
The extraordinary way in which
As boos for one tick away, each failure has been greeted with ever more glee
Broad has emasculated Warner, a titan with 23 Test centuries, would ordinarily be series-defining. Instead Broad’s hold over Warner has been trivial set against how Smith has enfeebled England’s attack.
And so, in a curious way, it encapsulated the contrasting fortunes of Smith and Warner this series that both walked away after their second innings dismissals at Old Trafford united in despair. Warner smiled ruefully, unable to fathom how his scoreless run has been extended.
After making 82, his lowest score in the series, Smith’s face was almost as pained.
As he trudged off, looking at the big screen in futile hope that the fatal delivery was a no-ball, Smith looked skywards in disbelief. Just for a fleeting moment, his extraordinary spell over the 2019 Ashes had been broken.