“Whether it’s club cricket,Shield cricket,Test cricket,I always try to make a really concerted focus on that first game of the series,to get runs on the board sets it up for the team for that game,but also for myself.”

Smith,of course,has prospered through numerous iterations of opponents trying to find ways past him. Constrained in his scoring by short balls,straight lines and leg side fields since the end of his phenomenal 2019 Ashes campaign,Smith spent much of this yearrethinking his methods,particularly after he failed to find fluency in Pakistan.

The outcome of those conversations and net sessions,shared with Labuschagne and others,was a simplified method,abandoning his trademark cross ways shuffle and balancing more equitably between front foot and back. From the moment he unveiled the change in Sri Lanka,Smith has looked younger and more nimble than his 33 years.

It’s an immutable fact of Test match careers that even the very best of players experience phases of reduced effectiveness,for reasons technical,tactical,mental or physical. Even Bradman endured a period of difficulty and ill-health spanning the period from the 1932-33 Bodyline series until his promotion to captaincy in 1936-37.

More recently,the modern greats Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar each faced stretches in which the dominant play that made their names gave way to protracted struggles to replicate such feats. In each case,the wages of captaincy and politics affected them in addition to bowlers finding better avenues down which to harry them.

But as Lara,and then Tendulkar entered their mid-30s,they found a second wind. For Lara,that meant 56 Tests for 5820 runs at 58.78 with 19 hundreds,including his reclaiming of the world Test record score before his 2006 retirement.

In Tendulkar’s case,a passage of 51 Tests between 2007 and 2012 reaped 4698 runs at 58.72 and 16 of his record 51 centuries. If Tendulkar trailed off again after that,as Ricky Ponting also did at the back end of a long stint as captain of Australia,it demonstrated mainly that all careers must also come to an end.

In Smith’s tale,there is now the distinctly enticing possibility that his career average of 61.47 may not have to be the high-water mark.

For if Lara and Tendulkar could raise themselves from around 50 to around 60 in a state of maturity,then Smith might actually be able to produce something like 70 runs an innings now he has opened up so much more of the ground from which to score.

Upon reaching his own 200 in early evening,Smith kept businesslike in marking the milestone. He’s chasing history that very few have ever been able to contemplate;Labuschagne,five years the younger,is eagerly chasing Smith.

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