Eleven years on from his Test debut, Steve Smith finds himself at an interesting point in his career: are his best batting years behind him, or will the challenges of the next 18 months push him to still greater heights?
But a peek of Smith's peak as Test batting legacy awaits
Amid all the distractions, all the chaos and controversies over the past 18 months that have knocked the world we know off its axis, it has been easy to forget that which hasn't been directly in front of us.
And for much of that time, much more so than any other period in recent history, missing from the lives of cricket fans has been Australia's men's Test team.
Not a single Test tour since September 2019. Just four Tests since January 2020. Only three Tests last year – the fewest in a calendar year since 1962.
Part of it has been COVID-19, without question, but the pandemic has at times felt like a timely diversion, a co-conspirator in the irrevocable shift towards white-ball cricket, be it international or domestic, for purposes that begin and end with revenue.
Through that lens we spy the diminishing shadow of Steve Smith.
It is not yet two years since Smith drove English bowlers to distraction in the Ashes, reaching a level of batting domination not seen in the sport's oldest rivalry since Bradman.
It feels like a lifetime ago. Part of that, again, is down to COVID-19, but it also might be because the Baggy Green has been so seldom spotted in the time between then and now.
Smith turned 30 two months before that Ashes series began, and for seven wonderful weeks (a bout of concussion notwithstanding) the cricket world enjoyed an all-time great Test batsman at the absolute peak of his powers.
It was not only the most prolific series of his storied career but the most impactful as well, if not for the enormous role he played in Australia finally retaining the Ashes away from home, then for the memory of England looking utterly bereft of answers to the Steve Smith Question as the northern summer wore mercilessly on.
Smith, you might recall, didn't play any cricket the previous summer. With the benefit of hindsight, and among the myriad other issues attached to it, his role in the Cape Town cheating scandal was terribly timed in the broader context of his career.
It meant that between ages 29 and 31 – considered among the prime years for international batsmen* – he missed out on almost as many Tests as he played: six through suspension, one-and-a-half for concussion, and five through the cancellation of tours due to Covid-19.
In all, he played just 13 Tests, scoring 1,341 runs at 63.85.
Through those same years, Ricky Ponting played 35 Tests (3,855 runs at 70.09), and scored more hundreds (14) than Smith played matches.
Even David Warner, who hit that age bracket only just before Smith, played 31 Tests in that three-year window (2015-2018), averaging a tick over 50 and scoring nine hundreds.
Smith turned 32 last month and the window is beginning to close on that peak Test batting period.
He has already taken note of the ICC's Future Tours Program, and is enthused by the volume of Test cricket across the next 18 months.
A home Test against Afghanistan, another Ashes, tours of Pakistan and Sri Lanka, home series against West Indies and South Africa, and then to India.
Challenges abound. By the time Australia leave India, Smith will be closing in on his 34th birthday and we will have a clearer picture of where his deeds sit in comparison with those who have come before him.
Between 32 and 33, Ponting averaged 40.72 in 18 Tests; that's 30 runs fewer than between 29 and 31. A similar dip for Smith across his next 19 Tests (one against Afghanistan, five in the Ashes, two each in Sri Lanka and Pakistan, five at home to West Indies and South Africa, and four in India) and his average will drop from 61.80 to somewhere around 55 – two runs fewer than Ponting's was on his 34th birthday.
These are all hypotheticals of course, but to say Smith would be bucking the trend if he was to maintain his current output across the next two years of Test cricket would be putting it mildly; between ages 32 and 33, no Australian has ever averaged his current mark through more than a dozen Tests, let alone 19.
The counterargument is that this is exactly what Smith does. For eight years he has bucked trends, shattered records, achieved the unachievable.
And he is clearly focusing his time and energy on Test cricket. He told cricket.com.au as much recently, conceding he would not be putting his involvement in this summer's Ashes in jeopardy by playing in the preceding T20 World Cup if his recovery from tennis elbow was incomplete.
In an unpublished part of that interview, he spoke about the challenges of the past two summers, in which he has scored just one century in nine Tests at home; the wiles of Neil Wagner, and the plotting of India, who he said tried to "out-patient me". He also talked about prepping for England, and the way he nowadays only needs to tailor a well-set technique and gameplan to suit "who I'm playing against, where I'm playing and what's coming at me".
It is the talk of a man with a well-founded confidence in his game. Since "everything just clicked" for Smith with his technique during his second Test century in December 2013, he has played eight Ashes Tests at home, scoring five hundreds and averaging 95.40. Moreover, in 62 Tests, he averages a century every 2.48 matches.
"Being able to adapt is the most important thing for me in terms of longevity; people come up with different plans – different fields, different ways of attacking you – and it's up to you to be good enough to counter what comes at you," he said.
"That for me is what I try and improve each day – just my thought process on how I want to go about it.
"My technique is my technique, and I've got that down pat, so now it's all in the mind, and getting that thought process in place to firstly have an idea of what they're going to do, but then if that isn't what comes, it becomes about finding a way to adapt to whatever it is out in the middle as quickly as possible."
From November right through to early 2023, Smith will at last have ample opportunity to put these methods into practice.
Those traditional peak years might be behind him, but the challenges in front of him will be motivating him to scale still grander heights in his Test career.
How successful he is in doing that – whether he soars, stabilises or stumbles – will go a long way to defining his legacy as a Test batsman.
*cricket.com.au looked at three research pieces across the past decade, with each landing on a Test batters' peak period as somewhere between 29 and 32.