Two years ago Australia entered the Ashes in utter disarray. The coach had just been sacked after the infamous homework-gate incident in India and opening batsman David Warner had been banished to an Australia A tour in Zimbabwe.
The England team by contrast were a well-oiled machine led with military precision by Andy Flower.
While Australia didn’t win that series, the seeds were sown for what has now become a remarkable revival, with Australia entering the series as heavy favourites.
Meanwhile, the England machine turned out to be wound so tight that with a little extra pressure it splintered into a thousand pieces and English cricket remains a fractured community.
But this is where the rubber meets the road. For all of Australia’s success in South Africa, the West Indies and of course at home against India, the Ashes is the yardstick and it will not play out as the 2013-14 whitewash might suggest.
Make no mistake, batting in England is hard. Australia has lost the last three series on the miserable isle and has consistently struggled with the swinging Duke ball. Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad may have struggled in Australia in 2013-14 but both are miles better at home and in Ben Stokes they may have a latter day Andrew Flintoff to bring the passion in the middle overs.
At the same time there are question marks up and down the Australian order. David Warner and Chris Rogers have consistently laid an excellent platform over the last two years but Warner can get caught up in the battle on the field and lose sight of the war, while Rogers missed the West Indies series through concussion.
Michael Clarke is a declining star with only five centuries since the start of the last northern Ashes series and he remains an injury risk. Adam Voges will likely play the first Test and while his first-class record is excellent he is a 35-year-old rookie in the Test arena.
The less said about the batting of Shane Watson and Brad Haddin the better and while Australia has gotten timely contributions from the lower order in recent times, tail order batting can evaporate at a startling rate.
All of which makes the case of Steve Smith so utterly important. Over the last two years, and particularly the last nine months, Smith has been transformed from millennial brat with no technique, no patience and very few supporters in the cricket public to a latter day Bradman, the beating heart of a resurgent cricketing nation.
Entering his third full Ashes series he is at once the present and future of the Australian batting line-up and his success or otherwise will go a long way to determining the series.
We have become so accustomed to Steve Smith’s otherworldly performances over the last 12 months that we are actually in danger of under-appreciating just how incredible his rise from (failed) bit-part spinner to batting anchor, future captain and face of the sport has been.
Hindsight is perfect so it’s easy to forget that Smith was on very few people’s lists of most likely to succeed as a Test batsman after the failed experiment of his early games as a leg spinner. Even as it became clear that he was not the heir to Shane Warne that Australian selectors ached for, Smith continued to be miscast as all flash and no substance. He was more likely to be castigated for the way he wore his cap than praised for his nifty batting and adroit cricket brain.
Yet here we stand, just two years after he was unexpectedly drafted into the Australian team for the northern Ashes in 2013 after a brief cameo in the infamous homework-gate Indian series, and Smith is the gritty pivot man for the best team in world cricket.
From emergency replacement to lodestone, Smith now looms as the key man for the Australian batting line-up for the Ashes series beginning in Cardiff on Wednesday night.
Even now it’s easy to forget that Smith was by no means a raging success even in the back-to-back Ashes series in 2013-14. His rise now seems foreordained but it could easily have never been.
With the northern series already lost for Australia entering Game 5 at the Oval, the selectors could have been forgiven for dropping Smith, who had produced just 270 runs in his first eight innings of the series. Luckily for Smith, Usman Khawaja had enjoyed even less success on the tour and he was the sacrificial lamb of choice. Smith took full advantage of the reprieve and scored his maiden century alongside dead rubber specialist Shane Watson.
Even after his maiden 138* at the Oval in that dead rubber game, Smith was far from secure in his position in the team entering the return leg of the back-to-back Ashes. Smith again failed to produce in the either of the first two Tests in Brisbane and Adelaide, though it hardly seemed to matter as the English were blown away in both games by tropical storm Mitch Johnson.
It was in the third Test in Perth in which the current version of Steve Smith, unflappable run machine edition, was truly born. Entering the game with his side at 3-106 (and soon after 4-129), Smith occupied the crease for 295 balls as his gritty 111 took the side to 338 and put the pressure back on the English batting line-up who promptly capitulated.
Smith then made further runs at his home ground in Sydney as Australia wrapped up the 5-0 execution and earned himself a lot of supporters and considerable insurance against any future form slump. Of course rather than test the selectors’ gratitude, Smith went from strength to strength, grabbing key runs in South Africa as Australia dethroned the mighty Proteas before a steady performance in the Gulf series against Pakistan later in the year.
Yet even then it was by no means clear how profoundly Smith’s trajectory would change over the next few months. The tragic loss of his friend Phil Hughes hung over the first Test in 2014-15 against India in Adelaide, but it was to be the match that crystallised the change from happy-to-be-there kid to leader of men.
After completing his century on Day 2 of the match Smith stood alone, but with all Australian cricket fans standing with him in spirit, paying tribute to Hughes with bat raised to the sky.
At that moment the idea that a 25-year-old, who barely 12 months earlier had been on thin ice to simply remain in the team, could be anointed as the temporary, and future, captain of the Australian Test team, the highest office in the land, was not simply understandable, it was inarguable.
As with Clarke before him, the ascension to captaincy sat well with Smith as he delivered the best home summer for a single batsman since Clarke plundered the Kiwis and Indians in 2010-11 in his first summer as captain.
Apparently not content with cementing himself as future captain, in the recent, abbreviated and largely unnoticed series in the West Indies, Smith took up one more challenge: the poisoned chalice that is the number three batting spot.
Universally acknowledged as the most challenging role in the batting order, number three has been home to some of Australia’s greatest batsman but has also in recent years been a turnstile of the hopefuls, with half a dozen players flaming out in the job. Smith meanwhile met this potential pitfall with a glorious 199 in just his second Test in the role.
But that was against the ghost that is the West Indies cricket team and on Wednesday night, or sometime later this week, the real challenge begins. Whether or not Smith succeeds at three is absolutely critical for Australia.
Former England spinner and popped collar enthusiast Graeme Swann has already intimated that the England camp feel that Smith’s unorthodox technique, so roundly criticised before his ascension over the last two years, is ripe for exposure.
With the combustible Warner ahead of him in the order Smith could easily find himself in the middle very early in the piece. How he handles that challenge will go a long way to determining the outcome of this series.
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