Smith’s glory days are gone, but he may have a parting shot to play

There’s a reason batting isn’t taught that way. Orthodoxy is coached because it survives better. It compensates for other weaknesses. But even masters of orthodoxy such as Greg Chappell, Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting declined after 35. News bulletin (send it to Washington and Moscow, please): ageing is a thing.

Smith’s motivations are opaque. It wasn’t a good sign when he selected himself as an opener this year because, in his words, he wanted a new challenge. It didn’t start well and it ended with 51 runs in four innings in New Zealand. Then came the reversion to No.4. The whole escapade was a minor humiliation for one of the greats of the game that wouldn’t have been allowed if the selectors had any authority.

On the field, Smith doesn’t give away clues, and only his closest circle would have much of an idea how he is thinking and feeling. You would expect he is aiming at the 296 runs he still needs to pass the magic 10,000, or a last Ashes campaign next year, but these are only guesses.

Making the battle harder still is that the Border-Gavaskar series is a bowlers’ one. Dr Grace said the crowd had come to watch him bat, not someone else bowl, but Australia and India have bedazzling attacks.

All the Australian pacemen have been outstanding, but the results in Perth and Adelaide have been determined pretty much by Jasprit Bumrah’s first spell on the first day. In Perth he was sublime. In Adelaide, affected by injury or not, his first spell was poor. The Australian top order, again trying to leave everything, was there for the taking, but Bumrah could not find his accuracy. Nor could his back-ups, and India did not have Australia’s bowling depth.

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In Adelaide, Labuschagne and Nathan McSweeney survived that day-one session, setting the match up for Travis Head on day two. Not Smith, whose technique again showed signs of age and the bad luck that comes with it.

Simon Katich has made the astute observation that although Smith might have a big innings in him – something to answer the critics, to reassure himself, to reprise his glory days – but his era of dominating bowlers with consistent plunder is over. He is far from alone. In recent times, only Brian Lara (nine), Kumar Sangakkara (eight) and Usman Khawaja (seven) have continued to score Test centuries consistently after turning 35. All three played with orthodox methods. The hunger remains sharp, at times, but every other part loses that fraction of a per cent that makes the difference at the highest level.

A last hurrah is nobody’s entitlement, but cricket is a sentimentalist’s game that doesn’t want to see its highest achievers fade away ingloriously. I don’t think any genuine cricket fan would not wish Smith well. Same for Khawaja, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. But no matter how they go in the middle, they share one certainty. They won’t get the chop. Today’s players can retire on their own timetable.