Could Smith be the Best of All But Don?
- Dec 21, 2017
- 5 min read
Could Steve Smith become Australia’s second greatest batsman?
It goes without saying that I won’t even bother comparing the current national captain to Sir Don Bradman, whose status as his country’s greatest ever batsman will almost certainly never be disputed. However, the argument around the second greatest willow-wielder from Down Under deserves to be warmed up.
It’s a case that has been gaining momentum for a while. With his 239 against England in the Third Test at the WACA, the Australian captain broke his own record highest Test score, turned the match en route to an incredible Ashes-reclaiming victory and became just the second batsman to post 1000 runs for four straight calendar years after countryman Matthew Hayden (2001-04 and then one more for good measure in 2005).
He has become a superhuman run machine, just as capable of grinding out a century as careering to one with flamboyant, arcing flicks off the leg. His timing and eye are impeccable against both pace and spin, his action idiosyncratic enough to unsettle bowlers and the ease with which he shoulders responsibility has seen his batting average rise since becoming Test captain in 2014. Smith first captained his country in the Second Test of Australia’s series hosting India. At the time, he had played 25 Test for an undoubtedly excellent average of 50.4. After 59 matches, Smith averages 62.32. The only batsman to have faced even 20 Test innings with a higher average? Guess who.
Smith faces hot competition for the title of the prince of Australia’s batsmen, with early century hero Victor Trumper, post-war pioneer Greg Chappell and modern-day superstar Ricky Ponting all deserving acknowledgement. So, what would it take for Steven Peter Devereux Smith to become The Best of All But Don?
Tests Runs Average 50s 100s 200s High Score
Steve Smith 59 5796 62.32 21 22 2 239
Ricky Ponting 168 13378 51.85 62 41 6 257
Greg Chappell 87 7110 53.86 31 24 4 247*
Victor Trumper 48 3163 39.04 13 8 1 214*
Firstly, there are the raw stats. Batsmen are there to make runs. Centuries, if ya don’t mind.
With 41 tons, Ponting is nine clear of his nearest rival Steve Waugh. However, he has nearly twice the Test appearances of any batsman in this comparison (international cricket has only become a full-time profession in the post-Packer boom of 1977, so Chappell and particularly Trumper (just 48 Tests in 14 seasons) had far lighter schedules than either Ponting or Smith). Smith is currently ranked ninth for Test tons by an Australian but at the age of 28, time is on the side of the New South Welshman. He passes three figures every five innings, a rate superior to Chappell (just over five), Ponting (seven) and Trumper (nearly 15). His 22 Test centuries have been compiled in just 59 matches. The only Australian batsman to reach that number in less Tests? Guess who.
One of the toughest challenges any batsman from any country in any format must overcome is scoring runs outside the backyard. Ponting made 17 centuries overseas in England, Africa, Asia, the West Indies and, most impressively of all, the subcontinent of India and Sri Lanka. It’s a part of the world visiting batsmen often describe with reverential solemnity, but Ponting made four centuries.
Chappell’s eight overseas tons included a career-high 247 not out against New Zealand in 1974. Smith has made nine centuries outside of Australia since his unbeaten 138 during the 2013 Ashes series. And it’s the Englishmen who have borne the brunt of his wrath with two more centuries coming against Australia’s traditional rivals while Smith’s 138 against New Zealand early in 2016 was also made in situations not dissimilar to his native New South Wales.
With his career still very much unfolding and his superstardom having come so quickly, so recently and in such a torrential flood, Smith is yet to have an innings that leaps off the history books to define his greatness. Think Trumper’s history-making 104 at Old Trafford in 1902, when he became the first man to ton up before lunch on the first day of a Test. Think Chappell’s 131 against England at Lord’s in 1972, where the next highest score was 56. Think Ponting’s seven-hour 156 to save the Third Test at Old Trafford in 2005 to (albeit briefly) deny an opponent who had waited over 16 years to reclaim the urn.
The absence of that one immortal knock is nothing more than superficial. The one genuine knock on Smith is something that he can’t control: the quality of opposition whom he faces. Aside from South Africa and India, precious few countries have presented dangerous bowling attacks in Smith’s past four-year reign as the world’s best batsman.
Embodying the dogmatic fire to rise when challenges are presented (that most proudly Australian of traits) Chappell averaged 58.77 against the West Indies in the first five years of their tyranny as the best bowling attack in the world between 1975 and 1980 with a high score of 182 not out. I know I’ve thus far been quiet on Trumper, whose stats do not indicate that he was anything particularly special, let alone one of his country’s greatest batsmen. However, he is another case entirely. Unlike the drop-in pitches and well-preserved fields upon which Chappell, Ponting and Smith have plied their trade, Trumper made his bones on uncovered pitches with bats that were glorified logs at grounds that rolled on merrily forever, bereft of the modern era’s boundary ropes. And that’s before we get to his legacy as a performer: in his most glorious appraisal, Monty Noble sung his praises for how Trumper’s “wonderful demonstrations shocked old ideas and brought light out of semi-darkness… with his coming the old order passed forever.”
If stylistic measures are anything to go by, those who have seen Trumper have left accounts that measure the man from Darlinghurst against any batsman of all time. Chappell was an elegant and technically perfect master of his craft, with the hallmark of his grace being the manner in which he seemed to have an extra second to play off the back foot. From the first over, Ponting could swivel onto the back foot to pull a delivery barely short of a length and his innings was away. Smith has incorporated the wild and wacky stroke play of Twenty20 to develop an unbeatable repertoire of attacking shots. He has used this unusual batting style that breaks many of the golden rules boys and girls are taught from their first net session to outscore all men in this study at the same stage of their career. After 52 matches, Smith had made 4,924 runs.
The only Australian to have more runs at the same stage? Guess who.
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