'I've found my hands': When Smith unlocked golden Ashes

It's a day out from the first Ashes Test at Edgbaston, and Steve Smith is worried.

No matter how diligently he searches, despite endlessly retracing well-worn steps, he simply cannot find his hands.

It sounds frivolous, but ask anyone who's misplaced a mobile phone or a set of house keys and they understand how anxiety escalates when every seeming solution to the mystery yields nothing but more frustration.

Smith knows the answer he seeks is tantalisingly, and self-evidently, within touching distance.

But every time he comes close to unlocking the mystery, he's left grasping at thin air.

And time is running out.

Image Id: EB225A0ABF9346A7A9FDD0BDBCBECC57 Image Caption: Smith prepares to train on the eve of the 2019 Ashes // Getty

The first ball of the 2019 Ashes Series opener is less than 24 hours away and Australia's primary batting hope, returning to Test cricket after a 16-month absence that included a year-long suspension from all forms of the game, can't remember how to hold his bat.

Well, that's something of a simplification.

As he fidgets and winces, among the shouted admonishments and silent screams, Smith is still striking balls being thrown at him by coach Justin Langer with what looks and sounds like the full-face and crisp timing.

But something intangible is clearly amiss.

"I just didn’t feel in sync," Smith told cricket.com.au this week as he prepares for his first game at the Birmingham ground since Australia's previous visit four years ago.

"I didn’t have any rhythm.

"It just didn’t feel right."

Image Id: 585A1CDBA53C4443B78AD5C169F4F58D Image Caption: In the Birmingham nets prior to the Edgbaston Test // Getty

Langer watches Smith's contortions at the far end of the practice net with a paternal sense of shared pain.

Over his 14-year and 105-Test career, most of it spent fronting up to the world's fastest bowlers who came at him with a brand new ball, Langer learned the smallest shifts in head position, the slightest change in placement of hands on the bat can mean the difference between fruitful and failure.

He also knows from bitter experience those adjustments are all-but undiscernible to the naked eye and – as Smith was communicating to him through tortured body language rather than verbal feedback – are often divined by instinct rather than driven by instruction.

"This is the whole thing about a game of cricket, it's all feel," Langer told cricket.com.au during his recent stint as media commentator at the World Test Championship Final in London.

"This is the difficulty of coaching compared to playing.

"When you're playing you’ve got full control over that feel, but when you're a coach or a mentor you're just watching, and it all looks the same.

"We're talking about minute degrees.

"It might be tiny changes in your head position, or the smallest shift in the placement of your top or bottom hand.

"You can't see that, but as a batter you can feel it.

"That's the key, and that's why, with Steve Smith, you just keep throwing and throwing and throwing balls until you hear him say 'I've found my hands'."

Image Id: 3F0669D963B2472EB08D110E84223240 Image Caption: Langer chats with Smith on the eve of the 2019 Ashes // Getty

But the more balls Smith soaked up during that hours-long practice session on Test eve four years ago, the more discombobulated he felt.

His message to Langer, feeding ball after ball into the plastic 'side-arm' used to replicate the speed and trajectory of fast bowlers, was as simple as it was plaintive – "keep going coach; I'll get better".

Despite the repetitive strain starting to burn in his right shoulder, Langer was happy to acquiesce because he believed in Smith's capacity to find a solution.

"When you coach Steve Smith, you don't coach him – you're basically just throwing balls," Langer said, instinctively rubbing his upper arm at the memory.

"That's because he works it out himself, he basically coaches himself and he is elite.

"He is the best problem-solver I have ever seen in the game of cricket.

"Smudge (Smith) problem-solves better than anyone, and that's why he doesn't sleep because he's always solving problems before he gets out to the middle."

Image Id: F491CBABA4C841F1BB024EC30D4967A7 Image Caption: Smith swaps bats during an elongated session // Getty

The previous occasion Smith's hands deserted him was before the preceding Ashes battle in 2017-18 when the then-Australia captain started the summer so scratchily he was dismissed for scores of three and nine in his opening day-night Sheffield Shield outing against South Australia.

A week later, they magically reappeared while batting for New South Wales against Western Australia at Hurstville Oval in Sydney, where his match return of 76 and 127 spelled disaster for England as he scored 687 at an average of 137.4 (highest score 239) in the subsequent Tests.

The only unknown in 2019 was whether that breakthrough would come before the Test match started, while he was batting on Edgbaston's centre wicket, or – chillingly – at some nebulous point later in the English summer.

As that foreboding doubt began to take shape in Langer's mind, and with the clock running on Australia's training time with all other batters having already departed the nets, the coach saw something in Smith's batting that he felt compelled to share.

It wasn't a technical matter related to grip, or stance, or head movement, or contact position with the ball, but something the coach nonetheless felt needed addressing.

And it proved pivotal in the history that would follow.

"I said something to him along the lines of 'mate, come on – you need to be a bit sharper, a bit more energy at the crease'," Langer recalled.

"He just looked at me, went back to batting and about five or six minutes later he said 'coach, come here'.

"I asked him what it was, and he goes 'thanks for that advice, I needed that'.

"And I got tingles all through my body – it was the first time ever that I got some feedback from Smudge, because he's such a genius at what he does.

"It was a golden moment in my coaching career because Steve Smith told me I'd said something that's helped him with his batting."

It was as he put that advice into practice, after hours of hitting balls during various stints in the Edgbaston nets across that afternoon and ten minutes before he had resolved to call it quits, Smith became aware of the sensation he had sought as all the disparate moving parts fell into place.

Image Id: CCDCB89AE41945B19E4420D28EF36B5D Image Caption: Smith trains with David Warner a day out from the Ashes opener // Getty

As if deciphering a Jefferson disk or completing one of his beloved crossword puzzles, batting suddenly made sense again and Smith knew instantly the spell was broken.

His hands were found.

"I normally don't stop batting in the nets until I feel in good rhythm, and it can change from different conditions as to what I'm trying to actually feel," he said, reflecting on that day at Edgbaston.

"But on this occasion, I felt like I was just getting my weight through the ball, leaving well and hitting the ball in the middle of the bat as consistently as possible.

"That's what I had been looking for and when I finally found it, I kept it going for a while.

"I batted for about ten minutes more to feel the groove, feel that I'm in a good place, and then that was about it.

"I think I hit 15 or 20 more balls where I wanted to, I saw them all well, moved well and then I was like 'all right, I'm ready'."

Smith returned to the team's hotel that evening a much-relieved figure, which increased his chances of getting at least the two or three hours sleep he's restricted to each night during Test matches.

That sense of reassurance was even greater for his coach.

"As soon as he says to one of the coaching staff or a teammate 'I've found my hands', you can sleep easy," Langer says, sporting a broad smile.

"When you hear those words, you know you don’t have to worry about Steve Smith.

"That's because he'll also say something like 'lock me in coach' or, in other words, get ready to add his name to the honours board for Test century scorers."

Despite the faith Smith's Test-eve pronouncement had engendered, Langer was decidedly on edge when Smith went to the wicket next morning with barely 30 minutes of play elapsed, the scoreboard showing Australia 2-17 and the rancid Edgbaston crowd baying.

For all the work he'd done alongside Smith since his return from the Cape Town incident, for all the quiet belief in the deposed skipper's wherewithal to reclaim his place as one of the game's modern greats, Langer was genuinely distressed by the storm into which his number four batter walked that overcast Thursday morning.

"The abuse he got at Edgbaston, I've never seen or heard anything like it," Langer says.

"It was disgusting, it was disgraceful and for him it would have been so humiliating.

"It wasn't just banter, it was straight-out abuse.

"I'm meant to be the tough guy, but there was a couple of times when I felt like crying."

Image Id: 74E84E0621A04745A10A98BE0F4E0898 Image Caption: The Edgbaston crowd taunt Australia’s returning Test trio // Getty

While he was never able to quell the spite and spittle that rained down from the Hollies Stand and other pockets of poison, Smith forced rival bowlers to bend to his will as he laid a foundation for one of the all-time great series by a Test batter in an England season.

The 144 he scored in the first innings at Edgbaston was followed by 142 in the second, by 92 in the next Test at Lord's before being withdrawn from the game with concussion, then 211 and 82 upon return from injury in the fourth Test, and 80 and 23 in the last.

By that stage, as Langer remembers, Smith had expended so much mental and physical energy wrestling insomnia and an unrelenting quest for perfection, as well as England's ever-evolving bowling plans and their never-gracious fans, he was a "walking zombie" come the fifth Test at The Oval.

But his 774 runs at average 110.57 will be eulogised and celebrated for as long as Ashes cricket is played, even if the recognition it received from partisan crowds was, at best, a begrudging standing ovation as he dragged his spent figure from The Oval upon being dismissed on the ultimate afternoon.

Only West Indies legend Viv Richards has scored more runs (829) at a higher average (118.4) in a four-Test stint in the UK, having made England famously "grovel" during the fabled summer of 1976 that shifted the axis of power in world cricket for the next two decades.

Given he now holds 31 of them, it's understandable Smith views being asked to name his best Test century as akin to nominating a favourite date within any given month.

However, he has no hesitation in identifying the most meaningful among that glittering collection.

Image Id: 34BB0631BC9A434094E63A75C2ACC1D8 Image Caption: Smith acknowledges the Edgbaston crowd after his first innings 144 // Getty

And his first innings at Edgbaston four years ago sits above the 100 he forged on a venomous green top at Centurion in 2014, 109 on a diabolical turner at Pune three years later, and unbeaten 141 on a typical early-season Gabba deck in the 2017-18 Ashes soon after rediscovering his hands.

Instructively, all of those came in the opening Test of a fiercely combative series.

As he returns to Birmingham for the first time since those monumental few days four years ago, Smith faces three incontrovertible realities.

He will be heckled by a vast majority of the ferociously partisan crowd, he will find sleep more elusive as the Test and the summer proceeds, and the runs he scored in 2019 won't help him a jot in 2023.

"I think you can draw on what you've done at places before," he says, when asked if walking back into those same practice nets and spreading out his mountains of gear in that familiar dressing room might instil within him a sense of calm.

"I feel that back home when I play at the SCG for instance, I've done well there so I have confidence initially going in there that I've done well on that surface before.

"So I'll have that no doubt at Edgbaston.

"But ultimately it's another game, another Test, so it is starting from scratch."

And as always, that new journey begins with knowing the whereabouts of his hands.

2023 Qantas Ashes Tour of the UK

First Test: Friday June 16-Tuesday June 20, Edgbaston

Second Test: Wednesday June 28-Sunday July 2, Lord’s

Third Test: Thursday July 6-Monday July 10, Headingley

Fourth Test: Wednesday July 19-Sunday July 23, Old Trafford

Fifth Test: Thursday July 27-Monday 31, The Oval

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey (wk), Cameron Green, Marcus Harris, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis (wk), Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Todd Murphy, Matthew Renshaw, Steve Smith (vc), Mitchell Starc, David Warner

England squad: Ben Stokes (c), James Anderson, Jonathan Bairstow, Stuart Broad, Harry Brook, Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Dan Lawrence, Jack Leach, Ollie Pope, Matthew Potts, Ollie Robinson, Joe Root, Josh Tongue, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood