As Steve Smith continues to leave the cricketing world in bewilderment, two experts have revealed how the freakish fielding talents that wrestled the first Test against South Africa into Australia’s favour can be learned.
While Matthew Renshaw’s breakout performance and Josh Hazlewood’s fourth-innings haul of 6/49 spearheaded the tourists to a 214-run victory in Durban, Smith’s anticipation ensured momentum was rarely taken from them.
His four slips catches in the Proteas’ opening innings took him past England’s Joe Root for the most in Test history (224).
Smith’s secret, as told to this masthead by Queensland Bulls coach Justin Sternes, is his adherence to fielding philosophies many cricketers do not abide by.
“One is watching the batsman, and getting cues off the batsman early, so you can get an idea of the type of shot batsmen are looking to play – the angle of the bat, the contact point, whether they’re on the front foot or back foot,” Sternes said.
“If you’re watching the batsman, you can pick up early cues, which allows you to anticipate. Some fielders don’t watch the batsman close enough, and they wait until they see the ball and react to the ball, and these are the fielders who aren’t as effective as your elite guys.
The other part, according to Sternes, who conducts private coaching and leads the Nudgee College and Sandgate-Redcliffe First XIs, was “teaching them the right athletic movement, making sure they’re in an athletic position so that when they do get those cues, they can move into position quickly”.
“Fielders who are very upright, caught on one leg, they’re not going to move fast enough to get into position.”
Smith’s day-three brilliance highlighted his inherent X-factor.
For his first catch, he moved early for Temba Bavuma’s reverse sweep off Nathan Lyon, then he followed with a diving effort high to his left off Pat Cummins to dismiss David Bedingham.
His third was labelled “out of this world”: reading Kyle Verreynne’s reverse sweep, and pulling off a one-handed diving take after South Africa had accelerated to score 35 runs in 31 balls.
Smith surprised even himself, with Lyon quipping “there is probably no one more impressed than what Steve is”.
“As soon as he saw that batter start to adopt a posture to suggest it was going to be a reverse sweep, it looked like he predicted that, anticipated that and started to move – he’s learned that,” Queensland University of Technology skill acquisition expert Adam Gorman told this masthead.
“We often think about it as he’s just predicted or anticipated based on what that batter is doing at that moment and using solely the movement of the batter.
“But the more skilled players will use a lot more than that. He’ll use the context of the game.
“The state of the game, the movements of the batter, the tendencies of the batter, the deliveries Lyon has bowled previously – all of that information gets used to different extents to help him anticipate what’s going to happen, and [athletes] learn that.”
Sternes said some fielders “don’t want to be engaged every single ball”, and that separated the likes of Smith and Marnus Labuschagne, who went beyond reacting when the ball was hit.
“In the modern-day game there are different shots around because of T20 cricket, and the reverse sweep is one. The batsmen are trying to take advantage of where the fielders aren’t,” Sternes said.
“[Smith] figured out he’s got enough time to see them try and reverse their hands and go down on one knee. That gives him enough time to anticipate and move into a position where he can either take a catch, stop the runs or get the batsman thinking about it.
“He’s starting to lead the way in that space.”
Sternes emphasised fielding had become an important consideration at selection tables.
“You have a big group of players you’re trying to pick from who are a very similar standard, and the first thing most coaches and selectors go to is who’s the best fielder?” he said.
“You’ve either got to score a lot more runs to stand out, or you’re going to have to be in the top two fielders. If you’ve got weak fielders in your team, you’re not winning championships.”
Smith’s desire to be involved with every ball is nothing new – his early highlight reels feature outfield heroics stemming from hours of practice.
“It’s probably an element of the 10,000-hour rule – he can probably do it with his eyes closed,” Australian great Beth Mooney said, pointing to teammate Phoebe Litchfield’s own tendency to produce the miraculous at training.
“We all work extremely hard at our craft, so it’s not a surprise when our lead athlete pulls off something like that.”
Gorman said developing anticipation similar to Smith’s came from a skill-acquisition principle he referred to as “representative learning design”. This means recreating different in-game scenarios, rather than purely honing the core skill, to transfer trained skills into competition.
“You need to be in the environment, so you’re learning to calibrate your movements with the information you perceive.
“We call that ‘perception action coupling’ – what information you perceive influences your actions,” Gorman said.
“Training should include the key perceptual information to be able to learn to calibrate and adjust your actions accordingly. If the training session doesn’t include that perceptual information, they’re not learning to use it.
“If you’re going to train it, it’s trying to train it in ‘representative environments’ – take a sample of the competition environment and recreate that, so players are learning to align their actions with genuine sources of information.”
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.