How science is cracking the code behind Steve Smith's Test match batting technique

Updated

When Steve Smith took to the field in the Ashes Test in Perth at the end of 2013, he was a middle-order batsman worried about his future in the side.

With a batting average of just 33 and a solitary Test century to his name from 14 matches, he seemed far from cementing his spot in the side.

But part way through his innings, after being peppered by a series of short deliveries from the English fast bowlers, Smith made a change to his game that would alter the course of his career.

Before each delivery, he began taking a step back and across his stumps. It was a radical change to his action that he had never practised before.

Smith went on to make his first hundred in Australia that game and since adopting this new technique, which has become far more pronounced over time, he has gone on to become the world's top-ranked batsman and has even drawn comparisons to cricketing legend Sir Donald Bradman.

While Smith's new technique is often derided as unconventional and even ugly, for sports biomechanics expert Rene Ferdinands, it's anything but.

"When you look at it from a biomechanical point of view, it makes perfect sense," he said.

Dr Ferdinands, who studied and wrote a coaching manual on a technique similar to Smith's in 2004, said he doesn't think Smith would be the player he is today without adopting his new technique.

"He's exceptionally talented, obviously, and mentally he's very good so if you put all those factors together, they count," he said.

"But I don't think he has a freakish ability to achieve this technique. I think this technique, once you do it is easier than some of the others, you just need to know what you're doing."

We sat down with Dr Ferdinands who explained the biomechanics of Smith's action and how it differed from other players.

For Steve Smith, this is as about as orthodox as his batting technique gets. As the bowler approaches, he looks like any other batsman. Feet shoulder width apart, relatively side-on to the bowler.

There is little here that gives him a biomechanical advantage over the bowler.

But just milliseconds before the fast bowler releases the ball, he makes two key transitions.

First, stepping with his back foot across the wicket, to a position well outside his off stump.

And next, in a less exaggerated movement, Smith points his toe down the pitch to a point in line with his leg stump.

The resulting position is akin to a fencer. The semi-sitting position, the feet more than shoulder width apart.





It is a near-perfect position to create what is known as horizontal ground reaction forces. According to Dr Ferdinands, these forces allow Smith to explode forward …

… or back, depending on the delivery.

With just milliseconds to assess, adjust and play a delivery from an elite bowler, getting into a good position before the ball is delivered is crucial.

Video: Cricket Australia

Not only does the position allow Smith to pounce on balls faster to score, it makes him much more survivable early in an innings.

By covering his stumps, Smith has a better sense of the balls he can leave and ones he needs to play.

But crucially, according to Dr Ferdinands, it means he can play more balls from outside the line of the delivery — a style of batting championed by Bradman.

This means that when defending on either the front or back foot, Smith's bat swing starts from a wider position than most batsmen, allowing him to present the full 108-millimetre face of the bat to the delivery or even play with a slightly closed-face bat back towards the leg side.

Defensive shots towards the offside typically only present half the face of the bat, meaning batsmen are more prone to edging the ball to slips — the most common way for a good player to get out early in their innings.

It might not sound like much but it does stray dramatically from traditional coaching methods that teach batsmen to play side-on and to play the ball as late as possible beside the body.

"It's a very effective technique. If an elite batsman can stop getting out, in the way that all bowlers are trying to get you out by moving the ball away and bowling on the off stump line, it starts to become difficult to get people out," Dr Ferdinands said.

Theoretically, the movement across his stumps leaves him more susceptible to getting caught LBW. But for Smith, that's a calculated risk.

"If guys get me out LBW, I say 'congratulations, well played' but if I nick one off that's when I get upset at myself," Smith said in an interview with Channel Nine.

"I think that's batting, you've got to minimise the ways you want to get out."

Smith's statistics help put into perspective just how successful he has been in doing that.

His average after 68 Tests is 64.56. An average above 50 is generally considered world-class. Batsmen Jacques Kallis, Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting all finished their careers with averages in the low to mid-50s.

While Smith, at 30 years old, is only part way through his career, having an average in the mid-60s at this stage is unprecedented among the most elite batsmen of the modern age.

Among the 10 top-averaging batsmen who played more than 20 matches and played most of their career in the past two decades, Smith's average is a clear stand-out.

What makes that figure even more impressive is that he had a relatively slow start to his Test career with Australia as a leg spin bowler who was handy with the bat.

Since the moment he changed his batting technique in late 2013, he has averaged in the 70s.

Of course with his exceptionally high average, Smith has scored runs at a phenomenal rate.

The other top nine batsmen in our analysis took about 10 more matches to score close to 7,000 runs.

At 6,973 runs, Smith looks set to score his 7,000th in the upcoming series against Pakistan.

So how does Smith compare to greats from different eras?

While looking at an average is a relatively common way of ranking players, it does have its flaws.

Comparisons of current players to batsmen who played decades or even more than a century ago do not take into account factors such as the quality of the opposition, the number of matches played or the fact that most pitches were left uncovered in the early 1900s, which made batting much more difficult.

They also do not consider the large fluctuations in scoring between innings that are common in cricket.

"There might be many times when you score less than 10 runs but then on the flip side there could be instances where you score a lot of runs, 100 plus, 200 plus," said Chris Drovandi, an associate professor of statistics at the Queensland University of Technology.

"There's a lot of variability in individual batting scores. So summarising all the scores into an average could potentially be a little misleading, since the average isn't particularly robust to the outliers."

In an effort to produce a better way of ranking players, Dr Drovandi compared the averages of all Australian batsmen and wicketkeepers who have batted in more than 30 international Test match innings since the 1870s.

Bradman, with his average of 99.94 over 52 matches, was excluded from the analysis because his stats were so good it could distort findings for other players.

So to investigate who was the second-best Australian player, Dr Drovandi first modelled how the averages had changed over the decades. That's the blue line on the chart below.

"It revealed an upward trend in the batting average over time, so … the first component is to construct a model that takes into account that trend," Dr Drovandi said.

"In order to do the ranking, you then look at how far the average is for a particular batsman away from that trend. The method also accounts for number of matches played, with the score shrunk more towards the trend if fewer games are played."

What he found was even in comparison to other decades, Smith's average was still extremely high. Smith produced a relative score of 19.17, which can be interpreted as 19.17 more runs than other players in his era after adjusting for number of matches played.

That was more than any other player in any other era. The next closest was Greg Chappell with a relative score of 14.56.

But whether he was the best batsman since Bradman was not as clear cut.

Dr Drovandi's ranking also provided a range of uncertainty for the results.

On the chart below, the grey bars show the model is 90 per cent confident the player's ranking sits within that range.

The more games a batsman has played the more confident of their ranking the model becomes.

"That is why Steve Smith's ranking isn't quite as high as what you might think because he actually hasn't played that many Test matches relative to players like Greg Chappell or Allan Border for example," Dr Drovandi said.

"So even though his score is higher than the other players, if you look at the intervals of the scores so it takes into account the uncertainty there, it's really hard to definitively say that he really is the best since Bradman."

Notes about this story

The data used for this story was collected from ESPN's cricinfo statistics portal and from Chris Drovandi at the Queensland University of Technology.

Credits

Design, motion graphics: Alex Palmer

Development: Nathanael Scott

Reporting, production: Mark Doman

Topics: cricket, sport, science-and-technology, australia

First posted