New band in tune from opening rehearsal

From the very first fielding drills conducted on Adelaide Oval’s immaculate outfield two days before the third Test match got underway, Steve Smith sensed changes were afoot.

Not just in the group of fresh faces that had hauled their gear into the change rooms and the usual chummy banter between teammates who know each other’s foibles and flashpoints had begun to take shape after the awkward introductory small talk.

But there was an intangible chemistry that the young captain intuitively picked up on.

A gut feeling that a group that was brow beaten as well as heavily defeated at Hobart, and had been addressed by Cricket Australia’s senior management in addition to a coterie of former greats in the dark shadow of that loss, had found a spark where all had been cold and bleak in many of the days previous.

If Smith’s team, in part rebuilt to his own specification such was his plaintive call for change in the wake of Hobart, had been rolled over again in the dead rubber day-night Test in Adelaide then the angst and hand-wringing of Tasmania would have been rightly judged as wasted energy.

If they had got bravely close with the pink ball to an opponent who had utterly dominated across all but one and a bit days of the preceding two Tests, then the strong words that flowed from across Bass Strait could have been justifiably dismissed as empty rhetoric.

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But the trio of uncapped youngsters summoned into that malfunctioning group – Matthew Renshaw, Peter Handscomb and Nic Maddinson – together with a couple of blasts from beyond-the-misfiring recent past (Matthew Wade and Jackson Bird) not only produced that galvanised performance that Smith had publicly pleaded for.

They helped to carry Australia to a Test match win that was as emphatic as it was unforeseen.

From the forlorn, lonely figure that fronted a media conference at Blundstone Arena less than a fortnight earlier, bereft of the answers the waiting media demanded to hear, Smith tonight plonked himself alongside player of the match Usman Khawaja immediately after today’s seven-wicket win and found it hard not to smile.

And when asked to identify the key elements that had changed – on the training track, in the dressing room and out on the ground in the heat of battle – across his five-Test losing streak that stretched back to Sri Lanka starting last July, Smith was more than happy to enlighten.

“I felt a bit of a switch straight away in energy and presence around the group come our first training session out here on Adelaide Oval (last Tuesday afternoon),” Smith said tonight, while acknowledging he held some mixed feelings having just watched his rival skipper Faf du Plessis accept the series trophy.

“Everything felt like it was running smoothly, and when it was our chance to get out on the field we had good energy and good presence about ourselves.

“That helps in the field as well, we were able to take some pretty good catches – probably a part of our game that has been a bit disappointing for a little while now.

“It works hand in hand, when you have that sort of presence and energy about you then you’re able to take the sort of catches that Petey (Handscomb) took last night to open the game up (when he dismissed du Plessis at a crucial moment).

“It’s been great to have these guys come in and create that energy, and have that hunger and character about them to want to win and fight and play games for Australia.”

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Smith had been quite prescriptive on the traits that he wanted to see in teams that he led on to the field from Hobart onwards.

Players who recognised those moments in a game when resolve will get you further than pure talent.

Partners who held the collective aim of the group in greater esteem than personal performance, even if personal performances in a losing outfit are the sole currency in which selectors invariably deal.

And he saw it in efforts such as Renshaw’s painstaking but incalculable 34 not out in almost three hours that saw Australia across the line this evening.

In Handscomb’s stunning catch that accounted for South Africa’s best batter of the first innings.

And in the game defining knock of Khawaja who had, through avoidable circumstances, been thrown in to the unfamiliar role of Test opener and produced the innings of his international career to date to bat more than a day.

Resilience and adaptability in its purest essence.

Not only was he Australia’s first (and only) century maker of the three-match series in which South Africa produced five, he demonstrably changed the way he usually bats to fit his new job specification.

And the environment in which he found himself, both externally under the floodlights and facing the pink ball as well as the radically altered team dynamic.

A change that was cited by du Plessis, as he noted the nature of a bittersweet fortnight in which his men claimed an historic series win but he became a figure of derision from Australian crowds because of his central role in a sweet controversy, as the pivotal change from the first two Tests.

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“For me the difference in this match from an Australian perspective was they just had someone that stuck in and scored big runs,” du Plessis said when asked if the reshuffle of opposition personnel had played a role in the Adelaide defeat.

“They have a bowling attack that will put pressure on you, but they need runs on the board to do that.

“In the first two Tests they didn’t have that.

“So I think the difference in this (Test) was that big hundred they had.

“If you take that away it would have been a similar sort of game (to the first two Tests) where we had them under pressure.

“Obviously they had a lot of changes.

“Pete Handscomb played a really nice innings, so he looks like a decent player.

“But hundreds is what changes games and that will be the challenge for everyone in the Australian team going forward.

“If they can do that they’ll be a good team.”

The other challenge awaiting Smith and his new band of brothers is to try and bottle that spirit they uncorked upon arrival in Adelaide, given they now wander off in different directions.

With some of them heading back to Sheffield Shield ranks for the next round of matches starting in eight days, while others will front up for ODI duties in the three-match VB Series against New Zealand that begins in Sydney on December 4.

The next Test match battle is another pink ball encounter – the first Commonwealth Bank Test against a vastly different opponent (Pakistan) at a venue that is yet to host a day-night Test (the Gabba).

But given the team that he led into Adelaide was something of an unknown quantity, Smith is looking forward to that outing with a confidence and a calmness he doubtless thought unreachable when he flew out of Hobart 12 days ago.

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“You don’t grow overnight, so I think it’s a good opportunity for this side to play a bit together and to improve and know each other’s games and get better as a team,” he said tonight.

“I think it was a great start but there’s still plenty of work to do.”

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