Smith Debate: Who Gets The Corner Office?

Steve Smith’s position raises eternal questions about who cricket teams choose to most accommodate, and why.

For all their attainments as individuals and a collective, perhaps most remarkable about this generation of the Australian men’s team has been their strident rejection of old school Baggy Green culture. Evidenced most vividly during the Justin Langer coaching farrago, Pat Cummins’ group have – admirably – transcended prevailing methods pertaining to sledging, homogeneity, and, in their own words, being a fuckwit. In terms of public perception, they may have lost some machismo merchants, but one suspects they’ve quietly won the support of most others. They’ve managed to do this while actually winning, emphatically disproving Australia’s unwritten statute that hostility is a precondition to cricketing success. Returning Australian cricket to the top of the tree is hard enough; to do so while openly eschewing the ways of The Greats even more so.

However, as the team enters its twilight phase, echoes of some issues faced by The Greats have arrived, and its leadership’s political instincts will be further tested. Public soft signals about Steve Smith’s return to number four appear – at the surface – a question of optimal accumulation of runs, to be solved by x’s and o’s thinking, hard data, and nebulous notions of “balance”. But zoomed out, it’s a lightning rod for eternal questions about who cricket teams choose to most accommodate, and why.

On the prospect of opening the batting, it looks like Smith may have buyer’s remorse. He’s floating a rethink. Many have pointed out that his best position is number four and, owing to his record, he should bat there. Usman Khawaja has advocated for the reversion and applied that very logic. Speaking to Fox Sports, he said, “Opening is a very important spot … (but) I still think we have the best Test player of my era in the side, in Steve Smith, and his best spot has been number four.” The key point is the qualifier that Khawaja thinks Smith is “the best Test player of my era”. He’s probably right. In Khawaja’s mind, Smith’s record from 2010-2024 permits him the privileges of highest accommodation in the team. He has achieved the most, ergo he’s entitled to the corner office.

One should always be wary of damned statistics. But here’s some, offered tentatively. Since his astonishing overseas Ashes feats in 2019, Smith has made six Test hundreds in 41 tests. He has averaged 43, largely batting at number four, at a strike rate in the 40s. Without doubt, they are solid numbers. And of course he remains deeply capable, as all champions are – his hundred at Lord’s mid-last accordingly demonstrative. But it is not unreasonable to point out that Smith’s legend was forged last decade, not this. Each of his batting team-mates have more frequently won games off their bat for Australia this decade. Smith is 35. It tallies. This happens.

It is also not unreasonable to explore why Khawaja might prefer Travis Head as his opening partner. The tortoise to Bazball’s hare, Khawaja, statistically among the world’s best openers in recent years, has sat in meditatively while his erstwhile partner, David Warner, pushed things forward. Smith, who’s strike rate has dropped as he’s aged, is today closer to Khawaja’s than Warner’s cadence. One can understand Khawaja’s personal preference that the score be ticking over at the other end.

But it’s not about me, says Khawaja. “For me,” he says, “the number one consideration is ‘what’s best for the team’?”. Indeed, sometimes what’s best for individuals may well be what’s best for the team, but here the question is: at whose cost? There are conflicting messages on whether Head himself wishes to open, even with all things considered, but one could excuse his hesitation. Whereas he may excel at the top in white ball cricket, or on Asian pitches conducive to spin, the technical requirements for opening the batting in Australia – whose summer brief requires runs against Bumrah, Siraj and Shami in Perth, into Adelaide at night, into Brisbane, into the near double-digit millimetres of grass on the MCG wicket – appear risky for a player whose method involves offering the off stump to access width. To be clear, that method has won Australia a World Test championship and been home to several scintillating hundreds at home – from number 5. He’s 30 years old. At his peak. Established in a position where he's won several games for Australia.

Who else might be impacted by the decision to accommodate Smith? It’s always useful to consider each player’s merits and offerings. Marnus Labuschagne, also 30, notionally at his peak, is settled at three. Cameron Green, aged 25 with 28 Tests to his name, has so far answered the challenge of batting four. Attentions then turn to Mitch Marsh. Does Australia need two all-rounders? Is he impactful enough with the bat? It’s difficult to deal with the first question, but not the second. He was Australia’s most reliable contributor with the bat last summer, he catches well, he’s a culture carrier, and it would be a very harsh call to both axe him and move Green to six in order to accommodate Smith. This is selection whack-a-mole.

This is before we consider the views of actual opening batters, from the system ostensibly erected to produce Australian cricketers, watching on. While the current candidates (none of whom seem to want to open the batting) and coaches publicly and privately jostle, one thing they all seem to agree upon is that they alone can solve this. It is also where the echoes of the past might be faintly heard. From the outside, it appears only the established order have the answer, only they can solved this, in-house. The shop – as Gideon noted in his last article – appears closed. As the team increasingly reaches back into itself for answers to its admittedly wicked problems, they implicitly dismiss the system that bred them. It could be argued that this specific issue begun with the indulgence of David Warner last summer, which by extension denied a new opener the opportunity to bed-in before Australia’s toughest home summer challenge in several years. Indeed, the jury on Warner’s handling necessarily remains out until we see this summer’s results.

The echoes of The Greats may reach further. When Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh and Greg Chappell bowed out together, preceding an era of winning wilderness, Australian cricket vowed never again. Later, when Warne, McGrath, Langer and co bowed out in close proximity, the same happened. Is Australian cricket on the doorstep of a repeat? This generation can rightly separate themselves from the approach of their predecessors, but on this front, there’s much to suggest that while history isn’t quite repeating, it may be rhyming.