Posted by Steve Smith’s cowardly plea to be protected from the new ball has been meekly granted by Australia’s spineless management team, less than a year after he persuaded them he really wanted to make a go of opening the batting. No official comment has yet been made on whether there is any kind of limit on how much the former captain will be indulged.
In January, Steve Smith’s whimsical request to become a Test opener was timidly accommodated by Australia, even though they had plenty of proper openers to choose from and he had no real history of performance in that position.
Flip-flopping Smith’s now changed his mind and Australia’s chair of selectors George Bailey says everyone’s of course going to bend over backwards to let him get what he wants again. It’ll be down to captain Pat Cummins and head coach Andrew McDonald to decide exactly what position he’ll bat in, but we can assume they’ll put Smith wherever he feels safest.
When Smith was first promoted all those months ago, reaction Down Under was somewhat mixed.
“Don’t be surprised if he breaks Brian Lara’s 400 record,” said a characteristically restrained Michael Clarke.
“I nearly vomited,” offered Kim Hughes.
(This article might not come across as being the most earnest, but those are actual quotes.)
Writing at the time, we were kind of open-minded about it. Smith has proven himself an okay Test batter and opening is, when you really boil it down to the essentials, basically just Test batting.
It hasn’t gone brilliantly though. Playing as an opener, Smith scored 171 runs at 28.50. To put that in context, it’s fewer runs than Joe Denly made as opener, despite Smith having played a third more innings. (It’s worth emphasising that opening was not Denly’s favoured spot. He performed better at number three.)
Smith hasn’t yet commented on the weakness of his move publicly, so we can’t yet know whether his request came because he’s fundamentally not up to the job or because he was frightened.
Pakistan’s selectors must have been listening to some Ridiculous Ashes episodes whilst binge watching Arrested Development and thought, ‘England changing their team constantly never works, they delude themselves into thinking it might, but it never does…. BUT IT MIGHT WORK FOR US’