ROOT
the times | Saturday December 4 2021 1GS 15head coach Justin Langer did upon
first sighting in 2009.
Langer told Ricky Ponting: “This
kid can’t play, he can’t bat. I put the
balls there for him to play a cover
drive and he’s smacking them through
mid-wicket. When he plays the pull
shot he swivels like a ballerina... I’m
telling you he can’t bat.”
It was a bit like that when Smith
was introduced to the 2010-11 Ashes
series. He was a blond leg spinner
who first batted at No 8 and a bit of a
joker. “I’ve been told that I’ve got to
come into the side and be fun,” Smith
said. How we all chuckled. Nobody is
laughing at him now, though. In his
27 Ashes Tests he averages 65.11 with
11 centuries.
His technique? Not as unorthodox
as assumed. Once the ball is released
his head is in an excellent position
and still with his eyes level, he moves
his hands back — using the rotary
method of Sir Donald Bradman,
although Smith copied it from Mark
Waugh, whereby the hands go out,
back and around but still come down
straight — and he plays the ball late.
Those are three key tenets of batting.
As with Root, Smith’s challenge is
that not too much weight is on his
back foot, and it was noticeable in the
recent T20 World Cup that, in
understandably attempting to power
hit in that format, that was definitely
the case. He was also not going as far
across his stumps in that tournament.
He will doubtless be doing plenty of
Test-match work before Wednesday,
although he could decide to move
less, given the recent tactics against
him, which have revolved around
targeting the body with a heavy leg-
side field. While England’s leg-slip
theory bore fruit only in the final Test
in 2019, New Zealand’s Neil Wagner
had success with the short stuff
against him in 2019-20.
Yes, Smith has a closed, bottom-
handed grip and is a little more open
than most coaches would prefer, but
he has an unusual ability still to play
the ball late, even if he sometimes has
both feet pointing down the pitch for
defensive shots.
There was some mirth when Smith
announced last year that he had
“found his hands” after struggling for
a period, but he was merely saying he
liked the look and feel of his grip on
the bat as, in his initial stance, he
looked at it behind his right foot.
As for Langer’s point about Smith
whipping balls through the leg side,
that is just a combination of fast,
flexible wrists and a game awareness
that is hard to better. Smith’s bat is
still straight until the very last
moment when it flicks to the leg side,
just as Viv Richards used to.
It was the batting coach Trent
Woodhill who first suggested this. “I
remember him saying something like,
‘Why don’t you just hit it where the
fielder isn’t, essentially, you know
you’ve got both options: you can hit
the ball straight or you can hit it to
where the fielder isn’t, and that’s
batting, isn’t it? You’re trying to hit
the gaps and batting is about scoring
runs so why play a ball that’s on
middle stump to mid-on and hit it
straight to mid-on, why don’t you
whip it through mid-wicket for four?’ ”
The length is key here. Whipping
good-length balls early in an innings
is fraught with danger. When the
length is so full or so short you can
indeed look to hit the ball wherever
you want, as long as you are in a good
enough position to do so and can hit
the ball late. That is what Smith does.
As Steve Waugh, who was a mentor
for the team in 2019, has said: “He
analyses every ball, and it’s like a
computer, he spits out the answer.”
Whichever of Root and Smith
provides the better and more
consistent answers in the coming
weeks will go a long way to
determining the outcome of this series.England’s often fragile batting line-up,
but now that does not concern him.
He cannot bat for the others. Root
was trying to do that, and it was
manifested in his movements at the
crease. He bats best when in a
positive frame of mind, always
looking to score and therefore
moving more certainly.
The Ashes changed Smith as well.
It was in the Perth Test of 2013 that
he made a radical decision mid-
innings to change his guard from
middle to middle-and-leg, and start
going back and across to combat the
peppering he was getting from Stuart
Broad and Ben Stokes.
“I started doing it and they pitched
a few balls up and I hit some nicely
down the ground,” Smith once told
ESPNcricinfo. “They bowled a couple
of short ones, I was getting out of the
way, and I was pulling them and
everything just sort of clicked into
place. I thought, ‘Jeez, why did I wait
so long to do this?’ ”Smith, 32, sometimes goes outside
off stump with that trigger
movement, but he backs himself to hit
any ball on the stumps and avoid
being leg-before.
“I basically know that anything
outside my eyeline is not hitting my
stumps,” he says. “So I can just leave
anything outside my eyeline. Then
basically it’s like if the ball’s on my
stumps, use my bat. If I’m missing it,
I’m probably in some trouble but I’d
back myself to hit the ball 99 times
out of 100 hopefully. Every now and
again I’ll miss one, I’ll say, ‘Bad luck,
Steve, move on.’ ”
Smith’s method is certainly
different. There is an awful lot of
movement before the ball is bowled
and often when it has passed to the
wicketkeeper if he is leaving it. He is a
fidgeter, an obsessive who is endlessly
superstitious (taping his shoelaces to
his socks so as not to see them for
instance), and a theorist, and it is easy
to misjudge him, as Australia’s nowthtththththtttthtththttttthtthththtththtththtttthtttthttthttthtttttttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhheeeeee eeeeeee eeeeeetititittmememmemememememememememememmmmmememememeeeesssssssssssssssssssss | SA classic Root square drive
off the front foot (1), with a
bent back leg (2) because of
the width of the ball, which
means that his weight is
slightly behind his front foot
(3) but the bat is still
beautifully controlled by
the top hand (4)14This shows how hard Root has to
work to prevent his head from falling
over. Ideally you want to be able to
draw a line from head through hands
to feet but Root’s head is slightly to
the off side, but at least it is forward
and by going back to middle-and-leg
stump with his back foot he is able to
be much better balanced...Root keeps his back foot parallel to
the crease lines, which means that
he can stay side-on and play the ball
late as his weight is still slightly
forward tooSIGNATURE
SHOT... WHICH HELPS
HIM PLAY THIS
STANCE
Snooker’s rude awakening
Snooker’s image as a vibrant and
lively sport took a dent this week
as Mark Williams nodded off in
his chair during a second-round
match of the UK Championship.
The former world champion
rested his eyes briefly when
leading 4-3 though later said he
had drifted off at 3-2, suggesting
he may have won a frame while
sleep-cueing. He lost 6-5 to
Anthony Hamilton.
Sleep can be costly. In 2010, the
golfer Jim Furyk missed his alarm
and his tee-time at the Barclays,
earning a disqualification from
the FedEx Cup event. Furyk had
been third in the standings but
slipped to eighth. He got away
with it by winning the Tour
Championship to take home
$10 million. I assume he spent it
on a louder alarm clock.
Few could slip between nod and
god so easily as Brian Lara. The
West Indies batsman burnt the
candle at both ends when playing
for Warwickshire in 1994 and
used to bring a duvet to thedressing room so he could
compile a quick 40 winks. The
day after his world-record innings
of 501, Lara played in a cup semi-
final at the Oval and as
Warwickshire fielded it became
clear he was exhausted.
After failing to run himself
awake at fine leg, he moved into
the slips but his eyelids kept
drooping. In the end, he slipped
off for a rest.
He was resting like a baby when
his team-mates came in, which
meant he couldn’t bat in his usual
spot at No 3, but Warwickshire let
him snore on as they replied
slowly to Surrey’s 267 until at 120
for four they asked the star
batsman if he fancied a go. Lara
strolled out, hit 70 nonchalant
runs in 73 balls before being
bowled middle stump by Adam
Hollioake’s slower ball and then
sloped off for a quick shut-eye as
Dermot Reeve finished the job. As
Prospero puts it in The Tempest:
these are such stuff as dreams are
made on.No mercy from
women’s sides
You don’t want to nod off while
watching England’s women play
team sports these days. The Red
Roses of rugby stretched their
unbeaten run to 18 with 239
points in four autumn
internationals, while the
Lionesses of football have won
their past six matches by an
aggregate of 53-0.
Poor Latvia suffered a 20-0
thrashing this week, the second
biggest defeat in women’s football
after Canada’s 21-0 win over
Puerto Rico in 1998, and by far
the most one-sided win
by an England senior
side, the men’s best
being a 13-0 victory
over Ireland in- When
Latvia consoled
themselves that
they had kept a clean
sheet for a glorious 19-
minute spell, it reminded
me of when I played rugby
for my college second XV
in a side so dismal that
“moment of the season”
went to a full back for
pulling off the tackle
that stopped one
opposing team
from passing 100
points.
THETAILENDER
Patrick Kidd
An era laced
with success
The most iconic footwear in sport
has been acquired by the Museum
of World Athletics after Michael
Johnson’s agent donated three
gold running shoes. Used at
different events, of course. I’m not
suggesting that Johnson had 50
per cent more feet than other
athletes, though that would
explain why he ran so fast.
The spikes were from the
Olympics in 1996, when he won
the 200-400 metres double, and
2000 and from his final race in- Brad Hunt, the agent,
described the chills
he felt when
Johnson told him of
his plan to run in
gold. He had
already caught
the eye by
setting a world
record in shoes
of an imperial
purple, wasn’t gold tempting
fate? “It put a lot of pressure on
me,” admitted Johnson, who
had failed to make the 200
metres final in 1992 after food
poisoning. “You wear gold shoes,
you’d better win.” Of course, it
was Nike’s personalised design
that helped, not the colour, but
sometimes you’ve got to dress like
a winner to become one.
PIC OF THE WEEK
Marnus
Labuschagne, the
batsman, gets
intimate attention
as Australia train
for the Ashes.
Concerns about
ball-tampering or
just an excuse to
show off his abs?
Oh for the days
when an Aussie
six-pack meant a
slab of Fosters!