Who is the Sky?

PL watches David Byrne and yearns for more Steve Smith in the BBL

David Byrne transports Australian audiences back to the apartment in the Village, not far from Steve Smith’s house

With the English mouldering in their graves and first-class cricket still in cryogenic suspension, we turn to the end days of the BBL where we find old mate Steve Smith sending balls high into the bright night air, the oft-ignored Beau Webster still doing that thing he does whenever asked, and Mitchell Starc doing with the white ball what he did with the red one and the pink one.

There are others of note too, but even among the noted, nobody, but nobody, plays cricket like Steve Smith, and it could be that he, because of his unusual energy and creativity, is one of the few who compel those with even a passing interest in T20 cricket to watch the game.

Once considered a nurdler, these days he’s bouncing balls off the top of the Brewongle Stand and slapping sixes like he’s sick of having sand kicked in his face.

More than what he does, it’s the way he does it.

New York artist David Byrne, who is Smith’s Greenwich Village neighbour, brought his Who Is The Sky? tour to Sydney on Wednesday, and this half of Et Al got along. Smith had performed the previous night at the WACA, an innings that may not have brought the highlights of his gig at the SCG over the weekend, but another beguiling cameo from a cricketer as intriguing and as enigmatic as the fidgety former Talking Heads frontman.

Smith bats like Byrne dances. All quirky shapes and rubbery limbs. This is not my beautiful game. How did he get there? What is this strange choreography at the crease? Steve Smith is (and, I promise I’ll stop after these next two sentences) burning down the house in the BBL, much as he did at the back end of the Ashes. If somone doesn’t find a way to get him back into the band for the T20 World Cup, then cricket has stopped making sense.

The BBL, or what our friends at the Grade Cricketer call ‘the Blobby league’ is having its moment, as it does this time every year, when even the least interested traditionalist attempts to tune in.

A quiet night in with a good book, the BBL and the U19s World Cup

The season has almost played itself out and looks to have gone well. David Warner kept the home fires burning with a couple of centuries and most runs, but he could not get the Thunder across the line. Smith and Mitchell Starc came back to the Sixers, helping them into the finals, which now feature just two other teams: the Perth Scorchers and the Hobart Hurricanes.

Tonight, the Sydney Sixers play the Hobart Hurricanes for a chance to play the Perth Scorchers on Sunday in the final in Perth.

The Hurricanes squelched through against the Stars in a game on the same night Byrne was playing. Beau Webster made his runs while the musician was singing I Met Buddha at a Downtown Party, a song in which the elderly guru is getting stuck into the buffet after quitting the “enlightenment biz”