Ashes 2019: ‘Steve Smith is not immortal – England must remember that’

The secret of his success is his eyes, and the time they give him to see the ball and adjust accordingly. The truly great players have this advantage over the rest of the international elite, gifted though those others are: they have the ability to slow down a ball travelling at 90mph, to move before others can, to make the world adjust to their rhythm rather than the other way round.

Curiously, for all the time I spent in the same Leicestershire team as David Gower, only once did I stand at the non-striker’s end with David at the business end.

We were playing Hampshire, Malcolm Marshall gliding in with that beautiful, easy, intense speed of his, bending the ball in late and lethally, popping balls up off a length, frightening the daylight out of us all, giving us nightmares, weak knees and panic attacks.

Gower was almost totally unfazed. It was as if he were facing a medium-fast seamer rather than one of the greatest slippery quicks of all time. It was like a strange cricketing superpower, seeing where a delivery was going before it had left the bowler’s hand, stepping into position to play it with an ease that made no sense to those of us who were hopping and praying under exactly the same onslaught.

That’s what Smith does. And with that ability comes another – the skill and wrists to place a ball precisely where he wants it no matter where it might initially be heading.

It’s like billiards played at 90mph, all angles and caroms and being three shots ahead of the poor, perspiring field. It is horrible for the bowler and it produces agonies for the opposition captain, for how do you set a field to a man who knows how to bypass every field you set?