Cricket teams are all about balance. Right-handers with left-handers, leg-spinners with off‑spinners, the range of personality and style and temperament and approach that make a team a complex and evolving creation, reflecting light from its varied facets.
After the fourth day of the Edgbaston Ashes Test, my colleagues in these pages have doubtless described Steve Smith in terms of a computer or machine, having calculated Australia’s course through the match. At the same time he was accompanied by two players who are extremely human. The balance was just right: one-part organism to one-part mechanism.
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