When I booked flights to watch Test cricket in India earlier this year, my greatest fear was that I’d have to cheer on Steve Smith.
By the time I got to Delhi, seeing him stride to the crease was a rare glimmer of hope.
What had happened to the cricketer who for five years had consistently put the “much” in “much-maligned”? Where was the man who myself and many others had lampooned, across summer beers and social media and various online forums, as one of the most mystifying Australian selections of all time?
Newspaper reports out of Sheffield Shield cricket suggested Steve had become quite the handy batsman in recent times. Given I’m as likely to take the online stream of a Shield match featuring New South Wales as I am to start supporting the Blues come Origin time, my skepticism remained.
But there he was – Steven Peter Devereux Smith – on day one of the fourth Test, on a Delhi dustbowl already spitting like a cobra, scratching his way to a gutsy 46 while his superstar teammates crumbled around him.
Here was a man who looked nervier than an Australian cricket fan who’d just discovered that Indian cricket grounds don’t serve beer, a batsman with none of the commanding presence of Australia’s preceding golden era.
He was an ungainly scrapper who blocked the good balls, dispatched the bad ones, used his feet to the spinners and generally played with the temperament of a Test match cricketer.
Sure, his 18 in the second innings capitulation was hardly worth shouting about from the rooftops, but given 16 wickets fell during that third-day carnage, I was willing to cut him some slack.
Naturally, as one of the few batsmen to emerge from that disastrous 4-0 series defeat to India with his reputation enhanced, he was rotated out of the Ashes squad.
After showing some form for Australia A before the frontliners arrived in the UK, he was rotated back in by coach Mickey Arthur before the South African was rotated into the Australian cricketing wilderness.
And now? On the surface, not much has changed. SPD Smith still looks as intimidating as a Kanga cricketer, perpetually confused and ready to burst into tears at the drop of a hat.
Or the drop of an outfield catch, as his shocker at Chester le Street (which isn’t a menswear range but a cricket ground – who knew?) in the Fourth Ashes Test showed.
Yet, despite my dedicated years of armchair criticism, I’m not too proud to concede defeat. Because despite all of the above, Steve Smith also looks the most likely of the current crop of twenty-something batsmen to still be wearing the Baggy Green in his 30s.
I slept through Thursday’s career-making 138* at The Oval, my interest in sleep deprivation therapy having disintegrated at around the same time as our batting order in the second innings in Durham.
But I didn’t awaken to the news on Friday morning and think “great, we’re stuck with that pretender for another series”.
It was actually more like “Good for you, Steven Peter Devereux Smith. I hope you’re here for the long haul”.
And if you make it to India in four years’ time, I’ll be proud to be there in the stands, cheering you on.
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