Smith’s Hundred Was the Footnote
NEWS / Smith’s Hundred Was the Footnote
The Oval, 7 June 2023, World Test Championship final. India won the toss and bowled. Australia 76 for 3, overcast, first morning of a final they had never played. Travis Head walked in. Fifth ball, not short, not wide, crashed square for four. Six fours in his first 16 balls. 27. The attacking selection was supposed to be the wicket India had come for.
He made 163 off 174. Twenty-five fours, one six. 163 of the 285 runs scored while he was at the crease. ESPNcricinfo later gave him the Test batting award for the year and noted the joke in the numbers: his control was 69 percent. Steven Smith, 31st Test hundred, 121 off 268 at the other end, was at 89.5 percent. Smith’s hundred went in as the second paragraph. Head’s was the first WTC final hundred, and his first Test hundred outside Australia.
ICC: Australia v India, World Test Championship final 2023. If the player does not load, open it on YouTube.
Australia won by 209 runs. Five months later Head made 137 in the World Cup final at Ahmedabad and nearly ran himself out on 99. He is No. 4 in the Test batting list. The Oval morning is still the cleaner joke: the man who looks like a risk walked into a final at 76 for 3 and made the careful hundred look like the extra.