It sounds dull, but the best bet might be to bore him out

How do you solve a problem like Steve Smith? England have tried everything, and the truth is that when the pitch is flat, he’s in a league of his own.

England believe he’s vulnerable when the ball’s moving around, and there’s no doubt he looked two different players when Australia last toured England in 2015. In batsman-friendly conditions at Lord’s and The oval he made 215 and 143. when the ball nipped around at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge, he made single figures four innings in a row.

But in Australia, unless you’ve got the pink ball under lights at Adelaide, there is almost no lateral movement. And that means you need something else in your armoury. You need either extra pace or mystery spin, neither of which England possess, or you need metronomic accuracy, which they haven’t produced.

I felt before the series that the two men England had to keep quiet were Smith and David warner. And in warner’s case they’ve mainly succeeded, by setting imaginative fields with a deep point and deep square leg that are turning his big shots into singles. He then ends up trying to push and prod, which brings the cordon into play, as we saw at the wACA.

But Smith (right) is another matter. You can’t fault the effort. England have tried to hide the ball outside off stump, and for a while in Brisbane it worked.

They have tried aiming straight with packed legside fields, and they’ve tried bouncers. Yet Smith managed 141 not out at the Gabba, and he was unbeaten on 92 at stumps at the wACA. I can see now why Stuart Broad came up to me during the last Ashes and said we pundits were wrong about aiming straight at Smith to trap him lbw. Broad said he misses nothing off his pads, and felt you need to start wider outside off, then drag him across his stumps before sending down the surprise straight one.

In the seam-friendly conditions you get in England that’s a good tactic. But in Australia you need something else. If you put five men on the leg side, you’re only leaving yourself with one outfielder on the off side, assuming you go with two slips and a gully. But at times England gave him too much to hit outside off.

Analysts at CricViz produced a heat map which illustrated how narrow Smith’s corridor of uncertainty is outside off stump. Miss it as a bowler, and the chances are he’ll hit you for four.

So what can England do? I think they have got to be boring — and go the whole hog. At Bangalore 15 years ago I asked Ashley Giles to bowl over the wicket outside Sachin Tendulkar’s leg stump. Yes, he made 90 but we bowled India out for 238. England must bottle Smith up. And if that means a 7-2 offside field, so be it. You need to control the run-rate until the second new ball, then aim at the stumps. It doesn’t matter how good you are: all batsmen are vulnerable then. Smith likes to get into a scrap. England have to entice him there. In his current form, they’ve got to think outside of

the box.