Steve Smith Is Ready To Take On Old Rivals England And He Sure Loves To Play Against Them
Steve Smith easily one of the best batsmen in red-ball cricket. One of the prime survivors in Test matches. The 30-year-old shuffles across the crease whereas his strokes put him in a separate league altogether.
The World Cup is over. England are enjoying the early days of their reign as ODI champions. Now it is time to focus on Test cricket since the ICC Test Championship is getting started.
Since we are talking of Tests, no harm in contemplating its true meaning, right? The format that requires the most resilience over five days, along with challenges, techniques and skills which provide recognition to players who come out on top.
Steve Smith, easily one of the best batsmen in red-ball cricket, is one of the prime survivors in Test matches. His batting style isn't the most prolific. The right-hander surely has a lot of flaws. The 30-year-old shuffles across the crease whereas his copyrighted strokes put him in a separate league altogether. He has his own class. Smith doesn't possess the picturesque shots of Virat Kohli, body balance and elegance of Kane Williamson and the righteous technique of Joe Root. Yet, he is right up there with the trio in the Fab Four.
It is because Smith has a humongous appetite of surviving the gruelling format. Day in and day out, Australia's Mr Dependable bails his side out of crisis and will be asked to replicate the same in the upcoming Ashes. It is, after all, Smith's homecoming to his favourite format, post the shambles of ball-tampering saga, against his favourite opponent.
Smith - England's old nemesis? Well, numbers don't lie
Smith will probably be the first name written on England's plan-chart. The right-hander has played 35.93 per cent of his total matches in the longer format versus the Englishmen. Further, he has the second-best average against England (43.31) while considering his numbers outside the home (with more than four innings). Of his total runs in Tests, 6199, 2026 of them (32.68 per cent) have come against Australia's arch-rivals. Smith's solitary double century and his highest score in the format has also come against England.
Further, the former skipper was in astonishing form in the last Ashes, played Down Under in 2017. The then captain piled up a plethora of runs in the five-match series and ended as the highest run-getter with 687 runs. Such was his dominance that he was 242 runs ahead of the second-highest run-scorer (Shaun Marsh). England's best performer, Dawid Malan, was 304 runs behind.
In the lead-up to the first Test in this English summer, Smith was seen practising hard at the nets at Edgbaston, Birmingham on Monday (July 29). During his lengthy batting stint, he shouted with a lot of emotion saying, "Better tomorrow, better the day after and better the day after that." It is safe to contemplate that it is a silent warning to the England side that the unorthodox batter is pumped up and ready to take charge of things once again in the Test arena.
