‘I felt I was getting stuck’ - How revamped Steve Smith is sending a warning to England

It has certainly been the talk of Australia this season - and beyond too. Indeed, I even found myself discussing it with Warren Gatland, the returning Wales rugby coach, in the media room in Cardiff before an autumn international recently.

Smith is always an interesting topic of conversation, simply because he has an unerring ability to surprise. He is 33 and, with a Test average of 60.41, is generally considered to be Australia’s finest batsman since the incomparable Sir Donald Bradman - even if Smith’s great mate, Marnus Labuschagne, is pushing hard for that mantle too (he now averages 59.94 in Test cricket and is just above Smith at the top of the Test world rankings). Yet, this year, Smith decided that he had to make fundamental changes to his batting.

“I felt I was getting stuck,” he said. “I was limiting my scoring opportunities.”

The decision was taken by Smith himself - “no advice”, he said - but it was a pretty drastic overhaul upon which he embarked. As a result, English fans will see a very different batsman in the Ashes next summer, although those who burnt the midnight oil to watch the three meaningless one-day internationals against Australia last month will have already had a sneak preview of the revamped Smith. Those matches were certainly not meaningless for him. During the first game in Adelaide he could be heard shouting: “I’m back, baby” to his partner, David Warner, after one delightfully timed and executed cover drive.

It was during that innings, a matchwinning 80 not out, that at a drinks break he was asked on the television coverage about what changes he had made to his method.

“Lots,” he replied with a laugh. And he is right. The signature huge back-and-across movement before the ball is bowled has gone. Smith once stood on leg stump and then moved so far across that he was often outside off stump, but now he stands on middle and moves only a little. There is a lot less fidgeting too, much less of the superstitious helmet-touching and pad-tapping.

Crucially, Smith is also staying much more side-on. I never thought that Smith’s previous technique - first used against England at Perth in the 2013-14 Ashes series, when he was being targeted by a barrage of bouncers - was quite as unorthodox as most assumed.

The movements before the ball is bowled are largely immaterial. If you could ignore them, then Smith’s position at ball release was generally conventional, with his head forward and eyes level. Yes, his way of moving his hands back, probably initially influenced by a strong bottom-handed grip underneath the handle, was to move the bat first towards gully before bringing it back around to find a straight line to the ball. But Bradman himself used that so-called rotary method - even if Smith had copied it from Mark Waugh. And Smith usually played the ball late.

Most of his basics were sound. However, he was always a little open when the ball was bowled. As time wore on, that position became ever more open and his weight ever more on his back leg (a batsman’s back pad protruding outside the front one in their set-up is always a telltale sign of poor weight distribution).

Smith found it less easy to play the ball late and his off-side game suffered, as did his ability to play fast, short-pitched bowling.

Indeed, Greg Chappell, in a sage recent column for The Sydney Morning Herald, pinpointed the moment he was felled by Jofra Archer at Lord’s in the 2019 Ashes as being the “genesis of his change”.

It was during that series that Smith’s Test average reached its highest point of 64.81, but his returns since then had been, by his lofty standards, more mortal, with only two centuries in 19 Tests before the recent series against West Indies.

Archer, when fit, is clearly very quick but New Zealand’s left-armer Neil Wagner had also troubled Smith with short stuff at a lesser pace. You can see why Smith was worried. The more square-on you are as a batsman, the bigger the target you present to the bowler. You have to defend with your hands out in front of your body simply because, as Smith has said, “your stomach gets in the way”.

As for the pull or hook shots, you can only really swivel them away behind square on the leg side, which was Smith’s main scoring area anyway. In short, he had become a little too predictable.

By staying side-on now (you cannot see his [back] right shoulder as he prepares for the bowler), Smith is, as Chappell observed in his column, actually taking his game forwards rather than just being “back” to where he was, as announced in Adelaide.

That cover drive to which Smith was referring was a great example of what being side-on can bring: the ability for the top hand (the steering wheel of a car) to be in control a lot longer before the bottom hand (the accelerator) provides the power for the stroke, while still being able to use the rotary pick-up because that feels most comfortable for him. The smaller trigger movement also means that it is easier for Smith to keep his weight slightly forward and therefore lean into those drives.

A vast improvement has also been seen in his pull shots, which are always played most eye-catchingly - as well as most devastatingly for the fast bowler, whose backbone is challenged if pulled in front of square - when the ball is just outside the line of your body on the off side. Smith had got to the point where he could not play those shots any more, but by staying more side-on it allows him to do so and to access the areas in front of square on the leg side, as well as those behind. He can extend his arms more easily, not getting them cramped up, the most common fault seen in attempting pull shots.

Smith’s general leg-side play is better now too, because he has a wider area in which he can score. Before, his technique just took the ball to certain places; now he has the control to hit it where he wants. It is a crucial difference.

“When I’m whipping them off my legs through wide mid-on, or pulling the ball through mid-wicket, in front of square, I know that I’m getting myself in good positions and I’m side-on,” Smith said. “I think if I’m able to pull the ball through mid-wicket, the bowler has to bowl either a little fuller or a bit shorter. It just gives me a lot more scoring opportunities.”

That unbeaten 80, off 78 balls, against England in Adelaide was the moment that he felt his hard work (any technical change requires hours and hours of often frustrating practice) was at last coming to fruition.

“I’ve been working on a few things, it’s almost been a six-month or 12-month process,” he said. “I feel like I’m staying a bit more side-on now and I’ve got my feet and hands in sync together. This was probably the first time I’ve actually had extended time in the middle with that change.

“It was probably the best I’ve felt in about six years. I was just in really nice positions and I felt good. We’re always looking for perfection, and for me that was as close to perfection as I will get.”

Wow. That is quite scary, even if not entirely surprising from one who has always been known as one of cricket’s great problem-solvers. A double century against West Indies in Perth, the fourth of his Test career among 29 centuries (the same number of centuries as Bradman), confirmed that Smith is mightily comfortable with his tweaked method.

Wickets fell at a rate in the most recent Test against South Africa on a Gabba pitch that was ludicrously green, but even then Smith made a first-innings score of 36 that was bettered by only three other players in a comedically quick two-day Test, stroking his first ball of the match through extra cover off the left-armer Marco Jansen for an all-run four with much of that “I’m back baby” style.

As O’Donnell says, “He’s gone back and said, ‘I’m not a good enough player.’ He’s literally made himself a different player, it’s extraordinary.”

It is indeed. It is undoubtedly something to look forward to next summer. Smith’s average in 32 Tests against England is 59.69, but, if you take out the Tests before his technical change at Perth in 2013, it rises to an astonishing 72.94 in 22 Tests.

And if you think English conditions may hamper him, then the chilling reality is that he averages 65.08 overall in England in 14 Tests, but that goes up to an absurdly good 80.12 in nine Tests since that 2013 change.

What will this latest change bring? It will be utterly fascinating, as will discovering the plans the inventive McCullum and Stokes have for him.

-The Times

Originally published as ‘I felt I was getting stuck’ - How revamped Steve Smith is sending a warning to England