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Quick singles: The incredible Mr. Smith

While not quite being an extraterrestrial computer, bowlers around the world will want to claim that Steve Smith is not quite human the way he's gone about his run scoring in the last four years since he made his comeback to the Australian Test side. Over 48 matches (and 88 innings) he has averaged 64.85 with 19 hundreds and another 18 fifty plus scores. And (unlike some modern "greats") he's scored these runs everywhere he's played as an away (incl UAE) average of 58.22 and hundreds in every country except the UAE show. Along the way he has become the fastest to 5000 runs among his contemporaries (unless Pujara or du Plessis achieve the possible but highly unlikely feats of scoring 1259/2642 runs in their next 18/36 innings respectively). He's also got comfortably the second highest average ever of batsmen with more than 5000 runs, ahead of the likes of Sobers, Hobbs, and Hammond. And as captain, he's miles ahead of anyone (bar Bradman of course) who has scored more than 2000 runs as skipper. Not bad for a man who made his debut as a leg-spinning allrounder batting at #8.

What give me additional personal pleasure is that three years back, I picked him as one of my stars for the future (and as future Aussie skipper). Given that he averaged just 38.45 at that stage with four hundreds after 18 matches, that was a pretty good pick!

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