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Opinion
Much has been said in the mainstream sports media about Steve Smith’s transformation from a leg-spinner to one of the greatest Test batsmen ever.
Even on specialist cricket news site ESPNCricinfo, Steve Smith’s bio states that “Steven Smith started out as a leg-spinner and [sic] become Australia’s best batter since Sir Donald Bradman“.
Many would come to assume that earlier in his career Smith’s primary skill was his bowling rather than his batting. This was not necessarily the case.
Smith had always been a better batter than a bowler in the longest format. He was a batting prodigy that got shoehorned in at number 8 as a leg-spinning all-rounder by the Australian selectors due to the extremely shallow depth in the spin department.
In reality, Steve Smith at the time of his debut was already showing signs of having a promising career with the bat in his very short time playing First-Class cricket.
In the Sheffield Shield season before Smith’s Test debut, the summer of 2009/10, the then 20-year-old Smith scored 772 runs at a batting average of 77.20 across eight First-Class games.
In his 13 innings, he posted four centuries and one 50 that included a high score of 177. On the other hand, he had taken 21 wickets at a bowling average of 44.38 and an economy of 4.25.
The only format that he was better at as a bowler was in T20s where he took 20 wickets at 13.50 in 19 matches by the end of the 2009 T20 Champions League.
Smith was also the equal second-highest wicket-taker in the 2010 Twenty20 World Cup where he took 11 wickets at an average of 14.81 and an economy rate of 7.08.
Steve Smith (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
Australia at the time of his Test debut had a well-settled top and middle-order of Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke, Michael Hussey, and Marcus North.
The first three are legends of the game and a part of Australian cricketing royalty while North was averaging 42.95 after 15 Tests.
Meanwhile, Australia was still on the hunt for the next long-term spinner after Shane Warne and Stuart MacGill’s retirements in 2007 and 2008. The answer looked to be Nathan Hauritz. However, Hauritz had suffered a heel injury prior to the neutral Test Series against Pakistan in England.
Australia was going through a dearth of spin-bowling options with the only spinner to have taken more wickets than Smith in the 2009/10 domestic season being Bryce McGain who in his only Test bowling innings the year prior had gone for 0/149 at an economy rate of 8.27.
With McGain blacklisted after his to put it kindly unideal sole outing, Smith somehow found himself as Australia’s spinner despite in his two Sheffield Shield seasons possessing a batting average of 54.62 and a bowling average of 47.21 in 11 First-Class matches.
Unsurprisingly, in his brief stint as a leg-spinner, Smith had a bowling average of 73.33 after five Tests before getting axed in 2011. He fared better as a batsman averaging 28.77 with two half-centuries, particularly against England where he got to bat at number six while being the only spinner in two of the three Tests and averaged 31.80.
In the fifth Ashes Test of the 2010/11 series, Smith posted Australia’s highest score of the game, an unbeaten 54 when he wasn’t Australia’s main spinner. While still far from world-beating, it wasn’t untoward for a 21-year-old batter making his start in Test cricket.
In the 2011/12 and 2012/23 Shield seasons that occurred after Smith was dropped from the Test team in 2011 and before his re-selection in 2013, Smith averaged 39.40 with the bat and 97.00 with the ball having only taken five wickets in 109.5 overs bowled.
Smith had given up bowling in the 2012/13 season, having only sent down 15 overs in 4 innings bowled after his displays with ball in hand where he took 4 wickets in 2011/12 from 94.5 overs at a bowling average of 103.50. Whereas he had a batting average of 41 in the same season.
Giving up bowling was a natural progression for a player aspiring to make a name for himself in Test cricket rather than in T20s. He had always been a batsman first and quitting his unproductive secondary skill allowed him to hone what he excelled at in the professional ranks of the red-ball format.
Steve Smith. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
He would go on to make his return in the Baggy Green in 2013 in the third Test of the Border-Gavaskar series in India as a result of the ‘homework-gate’ controversy where Shane Watson and Usman Khawaja were suspended for not submitting their three-point reflections on how to improve.
This would mark an 18-month exodus from the Test side for Smith. This time, however, he would be playing in the role he was actually suited to as a specialist batsman rather than having to also carry the team’s spin-bowling load.
He would be Australia’s highest run-scorer for the last two Tests of the four-match series accumulating 161 runs in 4 innings. He would be Australia’s highest run-scorer for the last two Tests of the four-match series accumulating 161 runs in four innings.
His performance in India and a century for Australia A vs Ireland would be enough to secure him a spot in the playing XI of the 2013 Ashes Tour of England. Smith would be solid as a middle-order option averaging 38.33 and constructing a century and two half-centuries.
From there, Smith would never look back. In the 2013/14 Sheffield Shield, he averaged 79.00, racking up two centuries and four half-centuries from nine innings. Smith would score 327 runs at 40.87 as part of Australia’s 5-0 whitewash of England in the 2013/14 Ashes.
The third Test at Perth would be Smith’s first Test match century in Australia and where he first adopted his trigger movement where he shuffle back and across his stump which would become a signature of his technique in years to come.
Following the Ashes, Australia toured South Africa and the UAE where he averaged 67.25 with one century at a high score of 100 and 43.50 with a high score of 97 in the two series respectively.
Australia would then host India which is where Smith would begin to start posting the gargantuan numbers that the cricketing world was accustomed to seeing from him. In the four Tests, he scored 769 runs at an average of 128.16. This included four centuries with a top score of 192 at the MCG and a 162 not out in Adelaide.
The rest of Smith’s Test career is history and well-documented. He piled up runs anywhere and everywhere in his own quirky way to currently boast an extraordinary average of 59.80.
In the longest format, bowling never really was Smith’s primary proficiency. After curiously being picked as a bowling all-rounder due to a lack of spin options in the country where he rather predictably did not do well.
When finally being roped into the Australian team as a batter after being one of the more promising batsmen statistically in the domestic scene, he would go on to become one of the best to have ever done it.
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