Steve Smith’s Ashes

When Steven Smith bats, there is only one narrative to the commentary: ways to get him out. One could get the feeling that he deliberately oversaw an innocuous crime to change the topic of discussion while he bats. Yet, the narrative never changes. It wouldn’t.

How to get Smith out?

First the bowlers target his ever tempting pads. “Bullseye!” they think without realising Smith’s eye is superior.

There is a 1 in roughly 5.2 to the 61st power chance that if you were to slap a table, all of the molecules in your hand and the table would miss each other and your hand would go through it. The probability of getting Smith trapped in front of his wickets is lesser.

When he was a kid, Steve Smith would have played cricket in his class using an exam pad. He’d have never let the ball or whatever round object he played with hit his pads. But he’d have still scored runs. Even if his ex girlfriend was a ball that darted into his pads, he wouldn’t miss it.

Then they try to get him out in the corridor of uncertainty – the line outside the off stump.

You bore Smith out by bowling at the 5th stump line the same way you want hindi in TN – you don’t. His average is lower comparatively on balls bowled in that line they say. But that is where he brings that lightstaber leave into the picture. So he doesn’t score that much. But he doesn’t get out too.

Maybe he could be forced out then. Not by a ban. But by a beamer. Once he was hit by a short ball, England thought that it’d mess his head up and create a psychological unrest. It messed his neck. Not his head. England actually thought that a short ball would scare him.

Fear is what he’d have experienced before admitting to you know what. Fear is what he’d have experienced when he landed at Sydney to face the general public and the press. Smith averages over a 100 facing bouncers. The bowlers are the people who’d have to trepidate at the thought of taking his head off.

The most adverse of adversities couldn’t take Smith out. If you think a short ball that took off more than it should’ve on an up and down pitch would take Smith down, you’re wrong.

But you won’t be more wrong than the captains who set a leg side heavy field, hoping he holes out to one of them. For when he bats, the men set at catching positions are like the twitches and fidgets he makes while batting. They’re there. But they don’t serve much of a purpose. Still, there’s an obsession over them.

In Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Network”, after his ownership was diluted down to vestiges, Eduardo Saverin rants at Mark Zuckerberg in a fit of rage. And then, for a brief, fleeting moment he emotes a sense of satisfaction in what is the single most worst incident of his life after discovering that Mark planted a story to belittle his name.

When Smith does get caught to one of those fielders, there’s that “It’s a Bingo!” moment between players and fans like. You think that you’ve figured out his weakness. But he has already sucked the soul out of your side with a gargantuan innings. Whatever that helps you sleep at night.

Steven Smith doesn’t sleep at night. He visualises about his batting. Bowlers and analysts don’t sleep when he’s batting overnight. They visualise different ways to get him out. But they could only visualise.

Steve Smith doesn’t get out.

In the middle, of all things, Steven Smith scores runs. When Smith first made runs, it surprised people – like a piece of code from the 10th page in google search results on a wannabe stack overflow site that successfully runs. Years on, they’re still startled but they know that the code would run.

And that’s because Smith’s aesthetics at times looks like he has made an adjustment and evolved his technique to combat and rectify every single dismissal of his. He has exaptated his game into such a shape. He is not a once in a generation player but like several generations of evolution coalesced into a single generation player.

David Warner is nicknamed as the Bull. But he is a bull that is endemic to Australia. He played Russian Roulette but with 6 bullets against Broad. Cameron Bancroft would run through a brick wall for his team. Here he was run through by quality seam bowling. Travis Head spent the last 6 months preparing for this Ashes series. He averages the same against right arm quicks bowling around the wicket.

But then Smith carried them and saved his teammates from opprobrium much like how he did in Cape Town months back. In Edgbaston when Smith scored a fifty, 8 wickets were already down. It seemed like an innings that would’ve saved his face alone amidst the collapse. But Smith is the face of this Australian side. So he ended up saving the side. Innings after innings. Test after test.

This English summer was full of miracles. Carlos Brathwaite pulled one. July 14 might just be the greatest sporting day ever. Even if it isn’t, British journalists would convince you. Ben Stokes at Headingley was another.

Miracles are miracles because they are inexplicable and unbelievable. Most casual test cricket watchers would’ve expected Smith to dominate the English bowling attack, despite the many clouds that hung over his head. Still, what he did over the 46 days was barely believable. It was like a miracle within a miracle.

Miracleception.