STEVE Smith continues to rewrite Test batting records, becoming just the second man in history to score more than 1000 runs in a calendar year on four consecutive occasions.
Australia’s skipper breezed past the 1000-run milestone for 2017 on day three of the third Magellan Ashes Test in Perth having notched his 22nd Test ton and his second of the series.
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In doing so, he became the fourth Australian after Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke to reach 1000 in a year four times and the second worldwide after Hayden to do it in consecutive years.
Hayden achieved the feat five times in a row between 2001 and 2005, a record Smith could match if he crosses the 1000-run barrier again in 2018.
While Australia’s exact Test schedule for next year is yet to be finalised, it’s expected Smith will have 10 Tests to top 1000 runs in 2018, which is the number of games it took him to do so this year.
And based on the form he displayed in moving to stumps on 92 not out yesterday, he’d be favoured to match Hayden’s record 12 months from now.
“He’s played with a cigar in his mouth,” former England skipper Michael Vaughan told Test Match Special when trying to explain the ease with which Smith batted on Friday.
“He’s hardly broken sweat, he’s batted wonderfully well.”
In reaching his hundred, Smith also became the third-fastest man to 22 Test centuries in this, his 108th career innings and 59th Test. Sir Donald Bradman (58 innings) and India’s Sunil Gavaskar (101 innings) are the quickest to that mark.
Smith is the 11th man in history to notch a 1000-run year four times, with Indian Sachin Tendulkar (six times), Hayden, Ponting, England’s Alastair Cook, South African Jacques Kallis, West Indian Brian Lara and Sri Lankan Kumar Sangakkara (all five times) doing it on more than four occasions.
While Hayden’s dominant start to the 21st century, where he averaged 1273 runs per year for five straight years, leaves him as the only man to have achieved the 1000-run milestone five times consecutively, Ponting fell just short of achieving that feat as well.
A sub-standard 2004, when he scored 697 runs at 41 in his first year as Test captain and missed three Tests due to a combination of injury and personal reasons, was sandwiched between dual 1000-run years in 2003 and 2003 as well as 2005 and 2006.
Lara also fell just short of five consecutive 1000-run years when an injury and illness-plagued 2002 saw him score just 351 runs in seven Tests, breaking a streak of 1000-run years in 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2005.
1000 RUNS IN A CALENDAR YEAR
(four times or more)
Steve Smith (Australia) – 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
Alastair Cook (England) – 2006, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2016
Kumar Sangakkara (Sri Lanka) – 2004, 2006, 2009, 2011, 2014
Michael Clarke (Australia) – 2008, 2009, 2012, 2013
Kevin Pietersen (England) – 2006, 2007, 2008, 2012
Jacques Kallis (South Africa) – 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2010
Sachin Tendulkar (India) – 1997, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2008, 2010
Ricky Ponting (Australia) – 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008
Matthew Hayden (Australia) – 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005
Brian Lara (West Indies) – 1995, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005
Sunil Gavaskar (India) – 1976, 1978, 1979, 1983
FASTEST TO 22 TEST CENTURIES
Sir Donald Bradman (Australia) – 58 innings
Sunil Gavaskar (India) – 101 innings
Steve Smith (Australia) – 108 innings
Sachin Tendulkar (India) – 114 innings
Matthew Hayden (Australia) – 128 innings
