The Ashes: In the age of unorthodox cricketers, Steve Smith is a natural fit

“You throw to him in the nets and you literally feel like you can’t get him out and there’s no batsman like that,” Australia coach Justin Langer said in the wake of Smith’s twin tons in Australia’s 251-run triumph over England in the first Ashes Test.

“And you just end up throwing a million balls and you are just lost for answers. [England] had some interesting tactics for him ... they had the really short point which I had never seen before, they obviously had a tactic they prepared and [England coach] Trevor Bayliss has seen a lot of Steve Smith since he was a kid, they would have studied him closely. But he just has a knack... he’s the best problem solver in the game.”

And while he solves whatever problem is thrown at him with unnatural calm, the fielding side has been struggling to cope with the challenge he poses to them in return. His two centuries in the Edgbaston Test helped Australia recover from being 122/8 in the first innings of the match to win by 251 runs on the fifth day.

Steve Smith’s 1st innings:

219 balls
336 minutes
16 fours
2 sixes
144 runs

Steve Smith’s 2nd innings:

207 balls
326 minutes
14 fours
142 runs

But it is not just England who have struggled against Smith – few Indian fans will forget his 109 at Pune on a raging turner, the 100 against South Africa at Centurion in 2014 was just as special as was the 141 against England in 2017.

While his temperament is clearly world class, his unorthodox technique is also making it difficult for the bowlers for bowl to him.

It was in 2013 that he first started shuffling across the stumps in the middle of the innings at the WACA. By the time the bowler is ready to release the ball, he can’t see the stumps at all… Smith’s pads are blocking the view and most arguments would make him a perfect LBW candidate. But 5,124 runs at a staggering average of 74.26 over 45 matches in the last five years are proof that the only thing he is a perfect candidate for is the player of the match award.

In an interview to Sky Sports just before the first Test, Smith gave us the gist of why it works.

“What I’ve learnt over the years is you want to limit the ways you get out. If you are getting out all different ways you start thinking about things and try to change things.

“I have moved so far across to off stump knowing that if the ball is outside my eyeline, I don’t have to play it and if it’s on my pads I just have to hit it, essentially. If I miss it and get out lbw I am okay with that as the majority of balls I’ll hit and I’ll score a lot of runs while I do so,” said Smith during the interview with former England captain Nasser Hussain on Sky Sports.

It sounds simple but it is any but. We’ve seen unorthodox before – West Indies’ Shivnarine Chanderpaul is one that comes to mind instantly but no one has done it as well as Smith. The genius of hand-eye co-ordination, like a Viv Richards or Virender Sehwag, relied on instinct but Smith is much more methodical.

Of late, we have been reading about how Lasith Malinga and Jasprit Bumrah have changed the game for fast bowlers. Their unorthodox actions present a different challenge to batsmen and they back it up with cricketing sense of the highest order. The same was true of Saqlain Mushtaq or a Sunil Narine.

Smith does much the same but the fact that bowlers haven’t managed to get a handle on him is as much a tribute to his technique as it is to his cricketing smarts. He never quite plays the same game – changing things here and there, keeping the bowlers guessing all the time.

“I’ve never seen anything like him,” former captain Steve Waugh told Channel Nine at Edgbaston, where he has been with the Australian team as a mentor. “His preparation is amazing, he’s thorough, he hits more balls than I’ve ever seen anyone and when he goes out to bat it’s almost like he’s in a trance-like state.

“He knows exactly what he’s trying to do, exactly what the opposition are trying to do, how they are trying to get him out. He seems to have answer for everything. He’s an incredible player, don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like him and his appetite for runs is second to none. His technique is amazing, it’s unique, but he knows what he’s doing and how to score runs. He analyses every ball and it’s like a computer, he spits out the answer.”

For now, though, Smith’s success may inspire more coaches to not tamper with techniques. While the textbook is great, sometimes being unorthodox is not that bad a thing.

In many ways, Smith, Malinga, Bumrah, Narine have shown that there isn’t just one way to look at a problem. Sometimes, the solution might just lie outside the textbook.