Smith-esque. That is to say, the shot that brought
Steve Smith his 10,000th Test run was not pretty or ugly. It was just very Smith: a whole lot of fidgety movement, teasing a flamingo, all very compelling, all very watchable for its enduring weirdness, all for a single to wide mid-on. In doing so he became the 15th batter to
make it to 10,000 runs. He could be the last.
Kane Williamson and
Virat Kohli are, respectively, 724 and 770 runs short, and on the surface, not that far. But the modern cricket calendar is working against Williamson getting there. He is 34, has a maximum of four Tests this year, his 15th as a Test player, and has presently opted out of a central contract. Meanwhile,
invisible stumps outside off as well as general bad juju seem to be conspiring against Kohli. He has nine Tests potentially this year, although five this summer in England loom first as decisive.
Even if either or both get there, they’ll be the last for a while. Angelo Mathews and Dimuth Karunaratne are the next two in line, but neither will get there, if only because they won’t play enough Tests to score the 2000-odd runs they need. Even Marnus Labuschagne, who is 30, has played 56 Tests, and plays for a country that plays enough Tests, is over 5000 runs away currently.
Which might, in time, create the same aura around Smith’s feat as when
Sunil Gavaskar became the first man to get there, nearly 40 years ago: it was distant, towering, impossible, unimaginable. It remained that way for a while once Gavaskar had late-dabbed Ijaz Faqih for those runs and said that he’d have been happy enough with a thousand runs, let alone the 9000 extra.
Allan Border didn’t get there until nearly six years later, a pioneer for the likes of Steve Waugh, Younis Khan and
Rahul Dravid in the 10k club, for making it look like the slog it must have been.
And then nobody else for a decade.
But when Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar got there, within six months of each other, it begat an age when getting to 10k happened often enough that some of the extraordinariness of the feat started slipping away. It wasn’t humdrum, but for a while in the 2000s,
as six batters got there, it did feel a little commonplace. It spoke not only of a spike in the amount of Test cricket being played, but also perhaps of a golden age for batting: of the 30 batters with over 50 Tests in the 2000s, 11 finished with a 50-plus average.
Then, Dravid, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis, one after the other in less than a year to round off a glutton’s decade. Five more got there in the 2010s, Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara bromancing so hard they decided to get there exactly a year apart.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul shuffled to the mark quietly between them. It took Chanderpaul over 18 years – the longest in terms of time – to get there from his debut, which is such a pleasing old-world fact. Who plays Tests for two decades anymore? Who takes that much time over anything anymore?
It’s easy enough to argue for the greatness of all these batters. It’s also easy to argue – as becomes clearer watching cricket of this era – that the 2000s, in particular, was a golden age for batting pitches.
Two of the last four to reach the landmark are English.
Joe Root got there in half the time Chanderpaul took, and 22 Tests fewer. If you say out loud what this means – that Root scored 10,000 runs in less than ten years – it sounds ridiculous. He beat Alastair Cook’s record for the shortest time taken to get there (just over ten years). Given how many more Tests England play than any other nation, Cook and Root got there with a greater sense of inevitability than most on that list.
Smith’s 10,000 is a reminder alas that nothing about batting, about cricket, about sport, about life, is inevitable.
Steve Smith is undoubtedly one of the greatest batsmen of our generation, but why is he most likely the last player to reach the milestone of 10,000 Test runs?
There are a few reasons for this prediction. Firstly, the modern game has seen a shift towards shorter formats such as T20 and ODI cricket, which means that players are playing fewer Test matches and therefore have less opportunity to accumulate runs. With the rise of franchise leagues and the increasing demands on players, it is becoming increasingly rare for a player to have a long and successful Test career.
Secondly, the demands of modern cricket are greater than ever before. With the rise of faster and more aggressive bowling, as well as the increasing competitiveness of international teams, it is becoming harder for batsmen to consistently score runs at the highest level. Injuries and burnout are also common issues for players, which can further limit their longevity in Test cricket.
Lastly, the sheer talent and skill required to reach 10,000 Test runs is immense. Smith has shown time and time again that he possesses the ability to score runs against the best bowlers in the world, but not every player has the same level of talent and determination. It takes a special kind of player to reach such a milestone, and it is unlikely that we will see another player like Smith in the near future.
In conclusion, while Steve Smith has already achieved the incredible feat of scoring 10,000 Test runs, it is highly unlikely that we will see another player reach this milestone in the near future. The demands of modern cricket, the talent required, and the shifting priorities of players all point towards Smith being the last of his kind.
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