Ashes 2019: Steve Smith savours the knock he already knows will be placed on his Mount Rushmore

After completing his century on Thursday, Smith closed his eyes and breathed before smiling and going through a more conventional celebration. He wasn't crying. He was calm. Mostly, he was grateful. It had been him again

At Pune, when Steve Smith brought up three figures in the first of his two 2017 masterpieces, he thumped his chest. It was wild and memorable. Six months later in Brisbane, to start that summer’s Ashes series, repeated it upon striking his century. Those innings, he knew instinctively, were the best of his life. They mattered more because of the degree of difficulty was higher with colleagues falling around him and took the most out of him above the shoulders. It had to be him.

For his third of this trinity – and his century at Edgbaston on Thursday was undoubtedly that – Smith closed his eyes and breathed before smiling and going through a more conventional celebration. He wasn't crying, and some assumed he might, after everything that’s happened since he last took off his baggy green in abject disgrace last March. He was calm. Mostly, he was grateful. It had been him again.

The trope when discussing Smith over the three months he has been in the country on national duty through the World Cup and in the lead up to this series has been discussing how much the guy craves batting. He shadow bats in the shower. He can be heard tapping his blade at night from adjoining hotel rooms. He was asked by team management to stop netting for so long because they thought he was overdoing it. All true.

Before play yesterday, there was a feature on Sky Cricket with Nasser Hussain where he went to Smith’s sanctuary, the nets, to ask him about those quirks and fidgets, including his refusal to have any portion of his shoelaces visible when he is kitted up at the crease. To underline the point, the former England skipper took to throwing balls at his subject to try and dismiss him. “I don’t like watching that much,” he explained to why he guards his wicket so fiercely.

When Smith lost the captaincy, this obsessiveness was referenced as something that limited him as a leader. So intense for so long and so successful as a result, he lost the ability to display any perspective. We all know what happened next. But by being liberated of the armband, he’s allowed to simply do what he loves again. As Trent Woodhill, his long-term batting coach, explained during the innings, there is nobody who relishes the process of batting more in the world, seeing each ball is a valued opportunity rather than a risk of failure.

Inspo-quotes have been part of the narrative around the Australian team. Last week, Justin Langer spoke of an Elon Musk nugget he has on his desk in Perth. On the eve of the series, Tim Paine copped some gentle grief from the local press when citing words given to him by Brad Haddin which he was told, incorrectly, were from Winston Churchill. During the week, award-winning writer Bharat Sundaresan watched Smith up close and heard him chanting to himself across the course of a typically marathon net session: "Better tomorrow, better the day after and better the day after that." For Smith, these words aren't pulled off Instagram – it’s just how he’s hardwired.

A couple of years into Smith’s captaincy in Chittagong, he lamented Australia’s propensity to collapse. He couldn’t understand how his talented colleagues had the ability to collectively lose the plot in quick succession. He did not say it in as many words, but it was clear that it did not compute for him how such mental fragility could seep through. So often, he was left watching from the non-strikers’ end. Their stumble 5-for-23 in the middle session did not have all of those despairing qualities - fine bowling was the main driver - but the result was the same. Smith was the last man standing between Australia and first inning oblivion.

It would have frustrated him doubly after the way he and Travis Head had changed the dynamic of the morning after coming together at 35-for-3. Either side of lunch, with Jimmy Anderson sidelined for the day, an opportunity existed to give the hosts an unexpected day in the dirt. When Stuart Broad tried to get the ball changed only to be laughed away by Aleem Dar, it suggested they needed a quick fix or risk running out of gas. But Chris Woakes remained patient, Head was trapped and soon the collapse was on. Smith was given as well, to Broad on 34, shouldering arms - saved by DRS. “The bottom line is he knows where his off-stump is,” observed Kumar Sangakkara. “Talk about keeping it simple. That’s as simple as it gets.”

In the period between the finger going up and the technology saying the ball was clearing the stumps, the Hollies Stand were at their loudest: “Gonna cry in a minute,” was their chant of choice – sticking with it, curiously, for the rest of the afternoon. They should have realised that having faced 77 balls by that point, the projections were grim. When Smith faces 50 deliveries in Test cricket, he averages a ridiculous 97.71 per dismissal. It might have been a trying hour watching batsmen come and go but he only needed one partner to ride shotgun.

Enter Peter Siddle. Yes, it was 122-for-8 but in the Victorian there was another player – for different reasons, the fact that this is surely his final tour as an international cricketer – who was going to do everything in his power to find a way through. Smith hammered Stokes through midwicket to bring up the team’s 150, by then beyond 50 himself. In the Brisbane epic of November 2017, it was Pat Cummins he could trust. This time it was the veteran and he played the role flawlessly.

By the time their union was broken, 88 had been added with exactly half from Siddle. This was no exercise in shepherding the tail and milking the strike. Rather, this was Smith doing an impression of the man who is on this tour with their as their mentor - Steve Waugh. By now the muscle memory was kicking in. A weighty 64 per cent of his runs, according to CricViz, were through the legside, batting nearly a foot deeper in his crease than any teammate to buy him time to do that. Smith was ready to launch at the same he averaged 137 against in the last Ashes and transition to God Mode.

Steve Smith led from the front on Thursday (Getty / Independent)

Still, he needed another sturdy ally in Nathan Lyon to guarantee progress to three figures, another 15 away when the ninth wicket fell. A six took him to 98, the century with a cover-driven boundary. Minutes later, he was 125 having slogged his 199th and 200th balls off Chris Woakes for four. Just three hours after having Australia 122-for-eight, Joe Root now had all nine fielders patrolling the boundary for Smith. He still split them thrice, bisecting a gap between two cow corners for a second six. By now, was scarcely believable what had happened.

“There were times throughout the last 15 months where I didn't know if I was ever going to play again,” he said, quite openly, at stumps. “I lost a bit of love for it at one point, particularly when I had my elbow operation. It was bizarre, it was the day when I got my brace off my elbow I found my love again. I've never had those feelings ever before where I didn't have a great love for the game and it was there for a little while and fortunately that love's come back and I'm really grateful to be in this position now, playing for Australia.”

Smith added that he was humbled by the reaction of his teammates to saluting for a hundred that he already knows is going to be placed on his Mount Rushmore. “It really sent shivers down my spine,” he said. “It's been a long time coming, getting another Test hundred, and it was a huge moment and I'm lost for words, I don't really know what to say at the moment.”

Smith hopes the sandpaper mess is in the past, and for him, it might be. He’s “moving on and proud to be back” and all the rest. Naturally, it’s not as simple as that: the episode will follow his name for a great many years yet – probably forever. But at last, he has back his refuge: the 22 yards that matter most to him. If perspective is what he lacked before, that main point won’t be lost on him anymore. Welcome to act two.