Archer copped a brutal Ashes ‘champing’. It was sledging in the right spirit

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Opinion

December 8, 2025 — 3.51pm

In just about every field of life, when you hear the word “champion” delivered with a certain tone, you know you’re in for a good time. Then you hear it on the field at the Gabba.

“Champion” can mean a few things. If Jofra Archer was, hypothetically, part of an England team to win the 2025 Ashes series, he might be a champion because he is a victor. If he was standing up for or defending a cause, he’d be a champion in the advocate sense.

Unfortunately for the fast bowler, Steve Smith meant neither of these things in the dying minutes of the day-night Test. Not because Archer’s England team is highly unlikely to win the 2025 Ashes series from 2-0 down (well, maybe a bit because of that), but because the delivery from Australia’s interim captain was coloured by a sarcasm reserved for only one possible definition of champion: as a code word for douchebag.

If you knew about the history between this pair, you might have picked it just by reading the words alone and not hearing them. Because although Smith might have played dumb after the game (“What history?”), he knows that everybody else knows that Archer cracked him on the head with a short-pitched delivery at Lord’s in 2019, forcing him out of that Ashes Test and the next.

And although that left him concussed, he knows – and needs everyone else to know – that Archer did not dismiss him that day and has to this day never done so despite bowling to him 222 times.

So when the generally mild-mannered 36-year-old came out to bat in a more heightened state than one might expect with 23 runs left to chase on Sunday night at the Gabba, and engaged in what we’ll call an “exchange of words”, the last 10 minutes became the best, even though nothing really happened.

Vis-à-vis: “You bowl fast when there’s nothing going on, champion.”

Steve Smith and Jofra Archer get better acquainted at the Gabba on Sunday night.

The heated chirps, picked up by the stump mic, were refreshing because they were sledging in good spirit: rivals having a dig without crossing the line into abuse, discrimination or threats.

Technically – given Archer provoked Smith by saying he “likes to play shots when there’s not much on the scoreboard” – it was rivals bagging each other for doing a good job (at the wrong time, mainly for Archer).

It was more Greg Thomas (“It’s red, round and weighs about five ounces; you’re supposed to hit it”) to Viv Richards, who then hit him out of the ground (“You know what it looks like, now go find it”) than Michael Clarke (“Get ready for a broken f---ing arm”) to Jimmy Anderson.

The addition of verbal sport to actual sport, when executed well and in the right temperament, makes for captivating Test cricket. Here, they danced together with flawless comedic timing.

Ball one: Smith pulls Archer for four.

Ball two: Smith sets sights on another boundary but misses. Archer delivers his line. Smith delivers his. Lots of not-nice smiling.

Ball three: Archer bowls a bouncer and Smith hits another four, albeit a little rushed and with a top edge. Archer talks some more. Ben Stokes claps. Smith says nothing.

What history? Steve Smith hits the deck at Lord’s after being felled by Jofra Archer in 2019.

Ball four: Smith belts a six into the crowd. He gestures towards Archer, who says nothing.

Ball five: A single, to give Smith 15 runs from five balls.

All the while, Archer’s pace had been climbing, from 146.6km/h to 149.5km/h to 149.4km/h to 150.5km/h. Well up from the 135km/h, give or take, at which he had bowled in his earlier spells – while trying to better his series average of 57 with the wicket he wanted the most that would make the least difference.

Down 2-0 and on the wrong end of a champing, but still shaking hands and meaning it.

In Smith’s eyes, it was “good banter. He’s a good competitor, he comes hard at you, so it was good fun”.

It “stays on the field”, he said, then continued cooking with gas.

“What history do I have [with Archer]?” Smith asked the media. “He was just bowling good pace. I’m not really sure what he said. I’m not really sure what I said. And it’s not really any of your business, either [laughs], so we’ll leave it out there.”