There are times when Steve Smith is surprised by a shot he has just played. Not surprised that it has worked so well, or badly, but that it has happened at all. He stares down at his hands, his bat, as though his body has betrayed him, like a rider might look down at a backfiring motorbike or an ill-tempered horse. There is Smith the vessel and Smith the occupant, acting out the concept of dualism for a live studio audience.
That was Smith in Manchester yesterday. His first ball of the fourth Ashes Test was unremarkable: short without menace, one to watch sail by. Instead Smith heaved at it, a circular dragging movement like he was halfway down the Amazon and trying to sling a large python over the side of a small boat.
Had the bowling been express, that shot might have carried for six. At the gentler pace of Chris Woakes, it was only going to land at deep square leg. A fielder was waiting, but by some stroke of luck Mark Wood was a dozen metres in from the rope, the ball clearing him for four. Smith looked at his hands: what have you done?
The appearance of Bizarro Smith is not something new. Those innings bob up. Lord’s at 2019 is the best-known example, after being hit in the neck by Jofra Archer, when Smith returned to the ground to smear three boundaries, leave a straight ball on its way to middle stump, review the lbw and then walk off before the result came in.
But you could take Dharamsala 2017, the fourth match of a tough series, when Smith reckoned he had three hours of concentration left in him and laid waste to the fast bowlers early in his 111. You could take Old Trafford 2019, the second innings after his double century, when Smith twitched and quirked and flayed his way to 82 declaration runs.
Take Delhi earlier this year, when a player who never plays the sweep played the sweep, missing the length and trapped lbw. Some rash of similar shots from his teammates had infected his system, and again he walked off in bewilderment, trying to figure how the virus had taken hold.
In Manchester this time, the first shot was not anomalous. This was a Bizarro Smith day. The back-foot square punch to a wide ball from Stuart Broad, an absurd degree of difficulty at the top of the bounce with hands so far from body. The over of five dot balls from Jimmy Anderson carefully faced, before throwing a cut shot at the sixth so wide that the toe of the bat sent it past gully. The walk across his stumps, then still making sweet contact with a yorker outside leg stump. He was 33 off 34 balls at lunch. Those hands were making their own decisions.
The thing is, not-Smith is also a version of Smith, one that may be contradictory to the rest but emerges often enough to be a part of the whole. Previously it has mainly emerged when Smith is overtaxed and overtired, or yes, concussed. His career peaks were built on prodigious levels of concentration, something that needed more than a few days between matches to recharge.
Smith these days seems to find that concentration harder to access. He did so for his century in the World Test Championship final, calmly harvesting runs in ones and twos to the leg side at the Oval. He did during his hundred this series at Lord’s, playing tight to the stumps and taking most of his boundaries straight down the ground. Both were all about control.
Across this series, his immense Ashes record has kept swelling. After Smith’s 41 in this innings, Donald Bradman is the only visiting player with more Test runs in England. Smith has gone past Viv Richards and Allan Border for a current tally of 2105. He passed Border’s mark for all Ashes runs during the previous match, and on 3269, only Jack Hobbs and Bradman have more.
All the same, it’s not like Smith has been ploughing through this series in the way that he did at his best. He hasn’t seemed quite right for some time. In this English season we have seen him get out trying to slog Ravindra Jadeja and Moeen Ali. We have seen a rare instance of him getting out lbw to seam bowling twice in a series. Wood added the second of those in this current match. The runs have come in drips and spurts rather than a stream.
It’s understandable. Smith is 34 and has been a long time at the top. Few have operated at higher mental intensity, and that or pure physical reflex can fade. The laser precision of Smith’s hand-eye coordination only needs to have dipped a fraction for his old technique of stepping across his stumps to become fallible. It has already been a long series. If we see Bizarro Smith when regular Steve gets tired, then the question with three innings to play is what Steve has left in the tank.
