![]() His 110 had come off 184 balls, and felt like an inevitability, an unspoken agreement between batter and fielders, from the moment he first appeared and began flicking and cuffing and gliding the ball into the spaces.Īustralia’s first innings tailed off a little to end on 416. ![]() The cover drive did for him shortly after the first drinks break, Smith reaching across, letting the hands – oh those hands – flay at a wide one from Josh Tongue and edging low to Ben Duckett. Jimmy Anderson overpitched, that bat face came whirling through, and Smith had his helmet off straight away, raising both arms, drinking in the applause of a crowd that had booed him out, more in a spirit of red-trousered panto-banter than actual malice.Īt which point Smith began to wave his bat more pointedly, running through a series of very precise shapes and patterns, taking in all relevant parts of the pavilion and the members stand, a little irritable, covering any missed spots, making the bat-pointing more complete and balanced and basically celebrating as he had batted for the preceding 169 balls, like a man solving an extremely complex giant-scale sudoku puzzle. ![]() From there Smith somehow has time to shift not just his grip, but his weight, his forward energy, and to bring his bat through in a perfect, withering arc, finishing with an almost parodically high elbow that got higher and higher as this innings progressed, so that by the end he was almost somersaulting off his feet as the ball scorched between the cover fielders. ![]()
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