Ruthless Smith shuts the door on England, and retirement

2 months ago 5

When Steve Smith walked to the middle of the SCG on day three, Australia still trailed England by 150 runs on first innings.

It is true that the defeated Ashes tourists had already been battered by Travis Head, wound up by Marnus Labuschagne and frustrated by Michael Neser to the extent that all their three DRS referrals were already gone.

But the fact remained that an Australian collapse – not unheard of in this series – would still afford England some hope of getting back into the game and perhaps conjuring a 3-2 result over five Tests.

That kind of ledger would certainly look good for England coach Brendon McCullum as he battles to keep control of the Test team, but it would be a travesty so far as the overall arc of the series is concerned.

So there was plenty in it for Smith as he took guard against Brydon Carse. What Australia needed was a display of ruthlessness from their captain and the remainder of the batting order, to build a lead and keep England in the field for the rest of the day and then some.

In more ways than one, this game has been something of a throwback after the TikTok length of the MCG match on a dicey surface. Usman Khawaja has referred, more than once, to how Australian pitches used to require significant batter error in order to stop the flow of runs, and that is how things appeared for much of this day.

In the same breath, much of England’s bowling and fielding were of the kinds of desultory standards that might be expected in the final Test of five. Thirty years ago in an equivalent match in Perth, the late Graham Thorpe dropped a slips catch off Steve Waugh and was so annoyed he booted the ball past cover to allow the Australians to run two. This felt similar, but there were still runs to be made.

Smith made them, if not with the speed of Head, then certainly with a level of focused intent that indicated unfinished business. Before the game, he had followed up Khawaja’s forthright retirement press conference by speaking as openly as he has in years about wanting to extend his international career.

“With Usman dropping off now it’s one of our experienced players, so it probably wouldn’t be ideal if him and I went out this week,” he said. “I want to keep playing.

“I’m just enjoying it, it’s fun, I feel we’ve got a really good team. As an older player now, hopefully I can help some of the players coming through and help teach them the game of Test cricket. That’s my role now.”

In the late 1980s and early ’90s, it had been Allan Border who taught those lessons to the likes of Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and Shane Warne, before they were passed along to Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke, Smith and Head.

Steve Smith made his first hundred of the series.

Play the game positively and to win, but don’t let the foot off the throat. On the 1989 Ashes tour, a young Taylor walked into the dressing room after making 219: Border congratulated him, but added with some edge that he could have gone on to 300. Next time Taylor got that far, in Peshawar in 1998, he made 334.

Smith had additional reasons to shut the door on England. Across this series, the Australians have faced plenty of criticism around selection, planning and even, this week, the skills of Cricket Australia’s high-performance staff. While chief executive Todd Greenberg got on the front foot about these matters off the field, Smith’s innings was the batting equivalent of his words before Melbourne.

“The statement we’re the worst team since 2010 was a huge one,” Smith said. “The way we’ve played our cricket for the last four years, we’ve made two Test championship finals and pretty much all the personnel is similar.

“We certainly see ourselves as a good team, we’re confident in each other and the way we play, and I think the best part of it is everyone stepping up at different times and taking their roles on and helping the team. That’s what you want.”

There may also have been another more specific layer to Smith’s relentless approach on day three. As Australia’s hectic second innings hurtled to a close at the MCG last week, Smith had pointedly chosen not to farm the strike in the company of last man Jhye Richardson.

How to play with the tail is an individual thing for most batsmen, but it had certainly been Australia’s way in this series to eke out every last run from the final few wickets.

Granted a much easier-paced surface here, Smith took calculated risks with good sense, while giving full vent to his mannerisms while dealing with a liberal diet of short stuff from bowlers running empty for ideas.

Interestingly, many of England’s best moments came via the part-time spin of Jacob Bethell, as a drying pitch showed evidence of deterioration. It was Bethell who slipped one into Head’s front pad for an lbw, and more than one delivery broke through the surface. The consequences of Australia’s lack of a specialist spinner will be measured in this game’s closing passages.

Smith, however, was pitiless as he forged on to the close, carving out stands of 71 with Cameron Green and an unbeaten 81 with Beau Webster. There will be more runs to be made on day four, ahead of England’s last chance to show a skerrick of the same ruthlessness that Smith and Australia have done.