Long hot summer Batsman’s record
The number of runs Smith has scored in Test cricket in 2019 - more than anyone else - despite not playing a Test until August and having just four innings he cures his insomnia and walks out rested.
The diehards who cast him as a pariah and planned to boo him all the way back to Australia are now a defeated rabble. The futility of jeering a batsman averaging 65 in Test cricket is inescapable. Most of England has waved the white flag. Disapproval was having no effect. When he finally consented to depart the stage, half-hearted boos gave way to a standing ovation. Smith’s re-emergence from a hiatus caused by a sickening blow to his neck rendered it impossible not to applaud his talent, his resilience.
What a batsman. What a swordsman. What a barnacle. The performance art of his “leaves” and endless twitching is only the junior component. Not everyone enjoys it. During one of Smith’s particularly long Zorro impersonations and subsequent Morris dances, Jason Roy, in the slip cordon, shook his head as if his soul could bear no more.
Roy’s negligible contribution in this series rather disqualifies him from comment on an opponent who would rather be burnt at the stake than give his wicket away. You can understand, however, why England are reluctant to provide an audience for his eccentricities. Out in the stands, where the pain is second-hand, the crowd has come round to the point of acceptance and respect.
From the moment this Australian touring party arrived, people wondered about Smith’s chances of turning his muddied public image round. In the World Cup’s early stages, the rehabilitation of offenders principle was ignored as cricket audiences sought to smother him in shame. Some of it was driven by outrage at his role in the balltampering scandal. Much of it was opportunistic. There is a long tradition on both sides of isolating dangerous players and trying to break them down, as Jonny Bairstow would affirm from England’s last tour of Australia.
The low point was the booing of Smith when he came back out to bat after leaving the field at Lord’s to recover from the effects of Archer’s brutal bouncer. The churlishness of that reception said more about the hecklers than it did Smith. Yet perhaps there was a realisation that derision had run its course against a giant of the game, a player keeping an ancient art alive: that of Test-match batting, with its twin tests of temperament and technique.
Archer is already a victim of his own success. The price paid for his remarkable debut summer is that everyone expects a rampage every time he takes the ball. This time Smith handled him comfortably while making concessions to his own safety: neck protectors and an arm pad, both absent when he was battered at Lord’s. Against Stuart Broad, England’s best bowler, Smith played and missed numerous times, but refused to chase the ball and so kept his wicket safe.
As Jos Buttler patted Smith on the back and Denly shook his hand as he departed, the pendulum swung in the pre-test debate. Would this be remembered as the Ben Stokes or the Steve Smith
Smith’s route back to respect was to dominate country that at first denied him forgiveness