Class above: Smith's Ranchi epic revisited three years on

Australia's 2017 tour of India was widely billed as a battle between the two best Test batsmen on the planet – Steve Smith and Virat Kohli.

Smith had climbed to the top of the ICC Test rankings some 20 months earlier, during the 2015 Ashes, keeping Kohli at bay in the intervening period even as the Indian skipper piled on double-centuries against West Indies, New Zealand, England and Bangladesh in the eight months preceding the arrival of Australia.

In the previous Test series in which they had squared off, the duo had gone century for century, remarkably peeling off four tons apiece across the four-match battle for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in the Australian summer of 2014-15.

Then, it had been a split-points decision in their burgeoning rivalry for Test batting supremacy.

In 2017, it was Smith by knockout.

After the Australian crafted a match-winning hundred on a Pune minefield in the opening Test, he went to stumps on day one of the second match in Ranchi unbeaten on 117.

In the process, he became the seventh-quickest player to 5,000 Test runs – a near-unfathomable feat given the fact he had debuted at No.8 as a leg-spinning allrounder less than seven years prior.

With the four-match series locked at one-all, the innings was a critical one for Australia.

Smith came to the crease in the first hour of play, with the wicket of David Warner. A more benign pitch than what had been on offer in Pune greeted him, and he set about his work, using his feet – back and forward – and preferring to drive rather than sweep the spin of the Ravis, Ashwin and Jadeja, as he had done in Pune.

With the wicket offering little and Smith increasingly comfortable, there was an air of inevitability about his hundred, which he reached in the final hour of the day without offering so much as a sniff.

It had been trademark Smith throughout; his patience and ability to put the bad balls into the gaps had propelled him to Test hundred number 19, at an average hovering around 61.

"He lifts the team to another level because he makes the game look so easy," said Glenn Maxwell, who had partnered with Smith at 4-140 and helped guide Australia to stumps without further loss.

"We watch him play and everyone's in awe of the way he goes about it – he does it in such a different, unique way and he owns that.

"He doesn't care what people say about his technique.

"He knows he has his technique doubters, but when the bloke's got 19 Test tons and averages over 60 I don't think you can knock it too much."

Smith carried on well into the following day, with he and Maxwell (104) acutely aware that a monster first-innings total was necessary given the conditions and the quality of India's batting line-up.

All told, he batted for 8.5 hours, faced 361 balls and finished unbeaten on 178, with cricket.com.au senior writer Andrew Ramsey noting "if not for the regular loss of wickets at the other end … Smith could conceivably still be batting, such was his level of comfort and competence on a pitch that was challenging but rarely threatening."

Australia's 451 all out eventually paled in comparison to India's 9d-603, but a final-day rear-guard from Peter Handscomb and Shaun Marsh ensured the match was drawn, setting the scene for a fourth Test decider in Dharamsala.

That Test would be played without an injured Kohli, who had not passed 15 in five innings in the series.

The tourists lost the match – and with it the series – but Smith scored another century, becoming the first Australian to score three hundreds in a Test series in India and extending his lead atop the ICC Test batting rankings.

Across the next two-and-a-half years (and despite missing 12 months through suspension) Smith would repeat his feat of scoring three centuries in a Test series twice more, putting him alongside Sir Donald Bradman, Sir Garfield Sobers (five times each) and Jacques Kallis (four) to have achieved that in four-plus Test series.

Three years on, the 30-year-old's remarkable triplicate in India stands the test of time, while in terms of performances since, Smith also rated his first-innings 144 in the 2019 Ashes opener as "one of my best hundreds, definitely … first Ashes Test match, the ball was doing a fair bit in the morning so I had to work really hard."

It was the first chapter of a stunning campaign in England – one that matched and perhaps even exceeded his deeds in India, occurring as it did in his first Test series back since the ball-tampering controversy of Cape Town and his subsequent 12-month suspension.

"His performance in the Ashes, I don't think I've seen one like it – it was incredible, unique," Test legend and former Australia skipper Greg Chappell told cricket.com.au last year.

"I've got the feeling he had a point to prove and he went about it in the best possible way."