Head hits early and often, Wade is ready to chance his arm – perfect players to ride shotgun alongside Steve SmithCricket 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. Related: Australia take control of Test after...
Australian’s second hundred of Test shows he is a sporting phenomenon to be treasured whatever your passportWell, what did you see my blue eyed son? And what did you see, my darling young one? I saw a man batting without a chance for 149 overs. I saw Joe Denly bowling in mid-afternoon. I saw a thousand pad-roll fiddles and five hundred box-flicks. I saw a game and a series and a career defined.And yes, like everyone else I saw quite a lot of Steve Smith. The fourth day of this first Ashes Test may have ended with England’s openers battling for survival, set an impossible 398 to win and a day to play out for a draw. But once again...
The Australian batsman was booed on his way to the crease, but 144 runs later left to applause from all around the groundThey came for one kind of story. What they got was another entirely. Under gloomy Birmingham skies Steve Smith produced an innings of rare and compelling brilliance, ending on 144 out of 284 and transforming through a combination of craft and will the direction of this first Ashes Test.It came, of course, in the most extraordinary circumstances. We booed him out – and we booed him back in again. And then in again. And then out. And then again at 4.44pm as Smith sprinted off the field, only to come haring back on again as the covers were...
Smith is a cricketer, not a criminal; he broke the Laws, not the law. So now the man who has been described as the new Don Bradman is back, he should be leading the sideWhen, or perhaps if, summer returns to England, I fancy wearing one particular cap. Of deep green with a gold Southern Cross on the bill, the cap would also sport four gold letters. MSCA: Make Smith Captain Again.Bad idea, you say? No, Brexit is a bad idea. This government is a bad idea. A particularly bad idea is the Hundred, harrumph. But reinstating Steve Smith as Australia’s captain makes compelling sense. It’s about time cricket grew up. Related: Aaron Finch and Mitchell Starc power Australia to...
Sport often welcomes back a bad boy turned good but some offences lie so far beyond the pale a return is almost impossible despite protestationsSteve Smith and David Warner were booed during Australia’s warm-up fixtures against West Indies and England in Southampton. The Aussies won both matches, and Smith got runs in both, so perhaps they won’t care about a phenomenon that seems likely to continue throughout the World Cup, even if they get to the final on 14 July.According to Smith, who spoke after taking a ton off England’s bowlers at the Hampshire Bowl on Saturday, the chants of “Cheat! Cheat! Cheat!” are like “water off a duck’s back – it doesn’t bother me”. But it should, because it...