Smith goes extra mile in drive to win

Anyone seeking to gauge the intent of Australia’s Test squad entering their final week of preparation for the three-Test series against Australia needed only to train their eyes on skipper Steve Smith in Colombo today.

A sun-soaked holiday Tuesday (one of Sri Lanka’s monthly Buddhist 'Poya' full moon celebrations) spent playing a practice match on a slow, flat pitch against a local Board XI comprising an ageing former great, a few international hopefuls and a handful of ‘clubbies’, the Australians asserted the dominance they had wrested on day one.

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The top six batters all scored 25 or more as they idled past their nominal first innings target of 229, and even though none of them pushed through to a score of substance the fact that all spent at least 45 minutes in the middle ticked a box ahead of next Tuesday’s first Test in Kandy.

But Smith is not one for the simplicity of checklists.

A perfectionist who is as driven as any before him to have held his country’s most esteemed cricket office, and who is taking an uncompromising approach to this away series against the world’s seventh-ranked Test team, Smith was clearly dissatisfied with one element of the day’s work.

Image Id: ~/media/5A4903233150492A898D7714E8376E0F Image Caption: Steve Smith in the nets in Colombo // cricket.com.au

That being his dismissal, adjudged lbw to pocket-sized left-arm spinner Chatarunga de Silva having battled the clawing humidity and his own instincts to dominate the bowling for almost two hours in scoring 57.

Whether Smith’s disappointment at losing his wicket halfway through a day that his team finished at 9-431 (a first-innings lead of 202) was a response to a lapse in his own decision making or that of the umpire remains unknown.

But there was no ambiguity in the message he sent by returning to the dressing room at P Sara Stadium, packing his trusty bat bag and slinging it over his shoulders, and summoning a couple of hand-picked net bowlers to follow him immediately to the practice facilities where he got started on another innings.

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With barely enough time to air his sweat-filled batting helmet and execute the change in batting gloves that he practices every few overs when out in the middle.

His choice of training partners for the 40-minute session he then embarked upon was also instructive.

Having lost his wicket to spin, albeit a bowler whose five international wickets were squeezed into a six-match ODI career in 2014, Smith enlisted cricket’s all-time leading Test and ODI wicket-taker Muthiah Muralidaran as one of his inquisitors.

The other was ex-Indian limited-overs all-rounder Sridharan Sriram who, apart from his vast experience playing in subcontinental conditions provides invaluable tutelage for the Australian batters in the nets with his probing left-arm spin.

Which is what they are likely to encounter in the Tests given injury ravaged Sri Lanka’s wicket-taking hopes rest heavily on the shoulders of left-arm orthodox bowler Rangana Herath who recently became only the second bowler of his genre (after New Zealand’s Daniel Vettori) to reach 300 Test wickets.

This was no perfunctory routine of metronomic throw downs to allow Smith the post-dismissal comfort of feeling bat on ball.

It was a typically focused, competitive duel with bowlers and batsman wrangling imaginary fielders, manufacturing game scenarios, and replicating the intensity of the battle between gold-standard competitors at the very highest level.

For despite his lofty ranking as the world’s pre-eminent Test batter, Smith is forever honing his game with the same restless relentlessness with which he tackles his protective apparel in between deliveries when batting in a match.

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After a lengthy nets session just days after his 15-man squad arrived in Colombo last week, Smith emerged to chat with Sriram who had seen something in the way the skipper was shaping to play his favoured release shot against the spinners.

The one where he comes down the pitch and looks to bunt over the off-side field in order to keep the scoreboard ticking and the bowler thinking.

The pair chatted for several minutes about angles, about batting grips and about footwork both offensive and defensive before the captain went away to process the new information ahead of his next hit.

It’s a level of thoroughness and an attention to detail that was glaringly apparent in much of the Australia batting on a day that, on balance, rather reflected the languid atmosphere of a midweek Poya.

When, unsurprisingly, a spinner claimed a the day’s best figures though it’s unlikely off-break bowler Shehan Jayasuriya’s 5-109 from 29 overs will force the hand of his (unrelated) namesake and Sri Lanka national selection chair Sanath who was among the handful of onlookers at the ground today.

Image Id: ~/media/6804EB14F0814EB597F96B8D92F21315 Image Caption: Steve Smith wasn't content with his half-century in Colombo // cricket.com.au

Against bowling that was more disciplined than dynamic and opponents whose enthusiasm was often reflected in the insistence of their appealing, the tourists worked on their concentration, their shot selection and their temperament while largely eschewing needless pyrotechnics.

Until Mitchell Starc arrived at the crease amid lengthening shadows to club 45 from 48 balls including a trio of hefty sixes., and put together a rapid-fire ninth-wicket partnership of 59 with Steve O’Keefe who enhanced his all-round Test appeal with an unbeaten 62.

The tone had been established by opener Joe Burns who resumed his innings unbeaten on 64 and added just eight runs in around 45 minutes this morning before he was bowled when searching for a drive.

As the pitch slowed up commensurately with the procession of nine Board XI bowlers – beginning with former Test quick Dilhara Fernando on his 37th birthday all the way through to opener Madawa Warnapura before he dislocated his left shoulder in a fielding mishap – so too did the Australians’ scoring.

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Usman Khawaja (31 from 57 balls) also fell to a drive when trying to up the pace, Adam Voges (43 from 80) played over an ungainly sweep shot, Peter Nevill (25 off 67) was pinned on his stumps and Mitchell Marsh was adjudged to have tickled an attempted nudge off his hip having scored 25 off 38.

Not that Marsh agreed with the umpire’s ruling, standing his ground, calling in mock protest for the decision to be reviewed even though the match boasts fewer technological aids than it does spectators, and then gently tossing his bat in frustration on his way back to the sheds.

A series of gestures that might have brought him to the attention of the match referee if the game was conducted amid the glare of a full-scale international fixture.

Which, regardless of the unstinting efforts that Smith and his squad have put into this match to try and replicate such an environment, this three-day tour game is most certainly not.