Smith's Knock Is Perhaps His Best One Yet

Adam Collins looks at where the former Australian captain’s innings at Edgbaston on Thursday ranks in his all-time list of career defining moments

- Adam Collins

One of the great privileges of this job is witnessing moments that go on to define cricketers’ lives. For batsmen, those are the days that they post three figures. When Steve Smith reached his masterful century on Thursday, I realised that on 21 of the 24 occasions he has saluted for a hundred at Test level, I’ve been in attendance. Aside from David Warner, Nathan Lyon and Australia’s team manager, Gav Dovey, I suspect nobody else has that kind of strike rate.

So what were the best? Which innings can I still pick the eyes out of years on? Given the Edgbaston miracle – and for so many reasons, that’s what it was – is being touted as the best of the lot, what sits alongside it in, say, a top five?

I’ll give it a crack out of those I’ve seen with my own eyes. That rules out his breakthrough at The Oval in August 2013 and two knocks that Smith himself has told me gave him the belief that he could seriously do it at this level: against England at the WACA in 2013 on a sporting track and taking on South Africa’s brilliant attack in a counterattacking gem at Centurion to begin their 2014 tour.

5: 162 not out against India at Adelaide, December 2014 – The degree of difficulty on this innings was not as high as others having walked in after David Warner had blitzed India on the first day of the series, but coming less than three weeks after the death of Philip Hughes, this meant a tremendous amount to Smith. When reaching the mark, in flawless fashion, he walked over to the 408 painted on the turf and looked to the sky – one defining images of a heartbreaking month and a brilliant Test.