Fan shock: meet Smith on the run

PUNTERS walking home from the Gabba on Saturday night were shocked not to have seen Steve Smith make runs.

But the bigger surprise of all came when he suddenly ran past.

Restless that he was out for 4 after just 10 balls at the crease, Smith decided to run the 3km back from the ground to the team hotel.

Sharing the Vulture St footpath with the hordes of well lubricated fans leaving the ground after a full day in the sun is no deterrent to a cricketer whose dedication to scoring runs knows no bounds.

The rare first-innings failure was the first time in 125 innings that Smith has been Australia’s lowest scorer.

His response? To put the miles back into his legs that he’d missed out on by not scoring a hundred.

Smith wasn’t on his own — a couple of other Australian players also walked home — but the batting genius would have turned a few heads as he pounded the pavement at a brisk clip.

Brisbane might have been an unusual false start, but Smith will need just 23 runs against Pakistan in Adelaide to pass 7000 runs in Test cricket.

It’s something he will achieve quicker than any other batsman in the history of the game.

Smith has only had 125 Test innings, while the current record holder for fastest to 7000, Walter Hammond, did it in 131 innings.

Earlier last week, Smith said he was relishing the chance to rekindle his relationship with coach Justin Langer, who was Australian batting coach when he debuted.

“I obviously had a huge respect for JL and what he’d achieved in the game. He was quite a young coach at that stage and as a batting coach of the Australian team it was great. It was almost the first time I reckon I’d faced the wanger,” Smith said.

“They’d just come in when he was coaching then, so we were sort of developing new ways to train. The old traditional throwdowns had almost gone out the window and it was the wanger coming into play. He had a great knowledge of batting and it was nice when I came into that team to have a batting coach of that calibre.”