India tour of Australia: Steven Smith, a 25-year old who has checked every box

Steve Smith has played just 23 Tests for Australia so far in his brief Test career.

Steve Smith has an open-chested technique and plays the ball very late. (Source: AP)

Many outside Australia were surprised when Steve Smith was named as Michael Clarke’s replacement. The lower-order batsman cum part-time leggie doesn’t quite raise visions of a strong leader barking out instructions at his team. Even while batting, he doesn’t epitomise solidity; in fact his idiosyncratic technique makes him look shaky even when he is well settled.

So did the decision-makers take a leap of faith by naming the 25-year-old as the Test captain? Not really. He might not be a purist’s delight but he is certainly effective. His 1749 runs in 23 Tests at an average of 46 is proof enough. Besides, he is a popular man in the Aussie dressing room and a man full of ideas.

The reason he doesn’t quite inspire confidence at crease is because he isn’t conventional in the traditional sense with all that restless energy but he is in fact an one-of-a-kind batsman. He has that special ability, like say Inzamam-ul-Haq, to play the ball very late. Unlike Inzamam, Smith might look a lot more restless at crease but watch him after his trigger movement: Just before the bowler releases the ball, he becomes so still that allows him to play the ball late. Smith goes back first and then forward while Inzamam would step forward and then push back but both are aware of the importance of the extended follow-through.

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With an upright stance, a curious grip — his bottom hand is almost turned counterclockwise that runs against traditional batting wisdom — and a quirky back and across trigger movement, he covers the stumps well in advance. Batting for Smith seems very simple. If the ball is short, his upright stance helps him to tackle the bounce and when it’s full, Smith doesn’t rush towards the ball but lets it come to him.

At Adelaide, Smith didn’t just dominate the Indian pacers but also negated the lone spinner — Karn Sharma. No Indian seamer hit a good length area consistently enough to exploit his open-chested technique. In the Mohali Test in March 2013, Bhuvneshwar Kumar castled him with a delivery that moved away from Smith to flatten his off-stump. That was the only time he got out to a seamer in the two Tests he played on that India tour.

Learning from the past

Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Pragyan Ojha had sorted him out in Mohali and Delhi as he was busy trying to defend them from the crease. He seems to have learnt from those mistakes, though. Against Karn, a bowler making debut and short on confidence, Smith used his feet pretty well. Often, he jumped across, covering for the turn and reaching the pitch of the ball to unfurl cover drives and on drives.

It’s a trait that he honed in his backyard as a kid. His father would throw a special kind of ball that used to spin viciously in either direction, and it required him to be aggressive, and use his feet, to counter it. And after those mistakes in India, he seems to have returned to his natural strengths. Time shall tell us how he goes from here but so far he has ticked all the boxes.

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