Some batters have spectacular hand-eye coordination. Others have an extraordinary thirst for runs. Steven Smith has both, plus a personal electricity.
He walks out to the middle in Galle on Friday, and long before he has the measure of this dusty pitch, or has his big shots humming, all the Smith fidgeting is there. There is the yanking of the pads. There is the twirling of the bat and switching from hand to hand. There is the self-chat. The bop of the knees as the spinner comes in. The pained gesturing to the ghost of a shot he could have played better.
In other players, these are nerves manifesting. Is something wrong with this guy? In Smith, it is just the current that never stops running through him. Something is going very right.
Ten runs in, he hasn't set the world on fire just yet. He has survived a hopeful review. He has been beaten on the drive. The shots he has played are of a high quality for a batter starting out on a turner, and early on the defence is of a quality that reflects his fresh status as a member of the 10,000-run club. Many greats have sculpted spectacular innings out of this dust - Kumar Sangakkara, Younis Khan, Mahela Jayawardene, Joe Root and Virender Sehwag - and started as unsteadily as Smith has.
Smith is on his way to adding his own piece to this hall of masters, but what distinguishes him is that internal motor. Ten runs in, he is cocking his to see what mid-off is doing, turning around to see how the square leg and deep midwicket areas are protected, shooting looks at the wicketkeeper, and glaring at spots on the pitch. Nothing escapes Smith's CCTV.
He has faced almost 19,000 Test-match deliveries by this stage, and is playing his fifth Test in Galle. But whatever data is observable, Smith is still mining. No detail is too insignificant. If a divot is left in the ground at fine leg by a diving fielder, you suspect Smith wants to know all about it.
His first 50 runs is where the day, and possibly the match, turns. He had arrived at the crease at 37 for 2, his walk to the crease already so intense and purposeful it is as if he's going somewhere way more important than the other 12 cricketers on the field. (If you saw someone stride through a corridor this way, you might assume there is a million-dollar deal to be sealed, or a baby to be delivered.)
There are shots Smith leans on through this passage while he is working his way into this innings. The cover drive, on the day, is one of them, and Sri Lanka start setting fields for it. First, there is one short cover in case a ball stops on him and he hits one in the air. There's also the short leg in case a ball from Prabath Jayasuriya that doesn't turn as much as Smith expects, and it comes off the inside edge.
Then there are two catching covers, plus a short leg, and the slip fielder who had seen Smith edge one on 12, but had the chance drop well short, which would seem like Smith got lucky. But he has let the ball come to him rather than pushing out, and loosened his grip on the bat. That, in turn, means the the bat absorbs a lot of the ball's energy and it won't carry to the fielder. Smith's brain has computed all of this, and has accounted for such contingencies.
This makes him sound like a batting cyborg, but there are some supremely human moments. On 34, he plays a reverse sweep. This is not a Steven Smith shot normally, but when he is batting as well as he was on Friday, he has decided to make an exception - like a bouncer letting a friend through the rope: "All right mate, just when no one's looking, you try sneak into this party".
Smith twists his wrists on the shot to get it to the unprotected deep-third region. Partly, this is that incredible hand-eye coordination, partly batting IQ, partly Smith CCTV. He knows that Sri Lanka have left that area unprotected specifically because they don't expect him to play the shot. He had glanced twice at that area in the seconds before he played that shot, his head forever on the data-mining swivel powered by that livewire energy.
The basis for playing the shot is extremely sound. An AI batting consultant would probably recommend it. And yet it takes a human to take a step into the unknown to play a shot they have resisted on many of the almost-19,000 balls they have faced in their career.
One risk pays off, and Smith takes another a few overs later, shuffling down the track to launch Jayasuriya into the sightscreen, before later sweeping the same bowler to get to fifty. On tracks like this, 37 for 2 can become 150 all out, and that, in turn, can become Tests lost inside three days. It has happened often to visiting teams. It happened to Australia in 2016.
Smith goes on to make 120 on the day. Alex Carey, very arguably batting even better than Smith, and certainly sweeping better, gets to 139 not out off 156 deliveries. By the end of it, Australia are so dominant that they are looking at another match-winning lead.
We can talk about Smith's last 70 runs, and how he manipulated the fields. But, by now, we know how that story goes. Sri Lanka's bowlers were tiring. Their captain had already tried several attacking fielding positions to get Smith out. And by that stage, Carey was flowing freely.
Other greats have come to Galle and played innings that felt like daydreams. Not this one. This one was brought alive by that personal electricity.