Beware, England: Steve Smith looks like a batting immortal again

F rom time to time around the Oval press box, little English-accented groans of annoyance burbled through the quiet. “Oh God. Here we go again.” Steve Smith was the cause, across the first two days of the World Test Championship final. Through the tinted windows placed just behind the bowler’s arm at the Vauxhall End was the perfect view of him, ball after ball: setting up outside leg stump, stepping across, nudging off his pads for a run on his way to 121.For British scribes who covered their last home Ashes in 2019, it was simply Smith picking up where he left off. They saw Smith do exactly that to the tune of 774 runs last time around, and any time your tally equals an ABC radio callsign you’re doing well. They can’t believe that Smith between that series and now returned to the realm of batting mortals. They can look at the numbers – 28 Tests, four centuries – but they can’t quite believe what they weren’t there to see.

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It was striking how much Smith’s hundred at the Oval resembled those from his last visit to England. There was the same bloodymindedness, a fully embodied determination that he was not going to accept anything less from his time in the middle. There was that scoring strike rate that spent most of the first day in the 30s before finally nudging up to 41. There were the 19 boundaries, only half a dozen of which went through the off-side between mid-off and point. Above all, there was a return to the technique that worked so well last time.During the interim, Smith had changed up, taking guard more centrally in front of the stumps and