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Joining the 10k club: How Steve Smith stacks up

We take a deep dive into the numbers that make up the legend

Among the 15 champions – and four Australians – to score 10,000 Test runs, Steve Smith might in some ways be the unlikeliest to have reached the milestone. The only one among the group to have played his first Test innings outside the top seven, Smith famously began his career as a leg-spinning allrounder. He had just turned 21 at the time and seemed merely another roll of the dice for Australia in its ongoing search for a Shane Warne replacement.

More than 14 years on, he stands among the giants of Test batting, his average scaling heights bettered only by Bradman and his peak stretches of brilliance even rivalling The Don himself.

Smith reaches 10,000 Test runs, then immediately dropped

Better than average

Smith's average topped out at a dizzying 64.81 after the fourth Ashes Test in 2019. At the time, he had batted 122 times in Test cricket. The fluctuations in the first 30 innings of a career aside, only two other players in the '10k Club' reached a batting average of 60 as their careers wore on (Brian Lara 60.96 after 52 innings; and Ricky Ponting 60.07 after 178 innings).

At home, Smith's average of 59.70 puts him in third of the 10k Club, while away from home, his mark of 54.60 is fourth among that exclusive group.

Overall, Smith's Test average of 56.33 puts him 16th among those who have batted 20-plus times in Test cricket, and seventh among those with 100-plus innings to their name.

Steve Smith's rise to an incredible 10,000 Test runs

Setting the pace

Given his unusual introduction to Test cricket, Smith doesn't feature among the fastest 100 players to reach 1,000 runs. Soon after, however, he began putting the foot down. Making 2,000 runs in 47 innings placed him equal 57th in Test cricket; for 3,000 runs, he surged to equal 18th; 4,000 runs equal 12th; 5,000 runs equal seventh; 6,000 runs equal second; and his 126 innings for 7,000 runs is the fastest in history. Smith held onto that lead for 8,000 runs, was overtaken by Kumar Sangakkara for 9,000 runs, and sits in fifth spot upon reaching 10,000 runs.

The Big Three

Leading into Sydney, Smith had played a whopping 60 Tests against England (37) and India (23), which equates to 53 per cent of his career matches. So it's no surprise that the majority of his runs – more than 57 per cent – have come against those two sides.

Only two players – Bradman (5,028) and Allan Border (3,548) – have scored more Test runs against England than Smith's 3,417, and it would be a surprise if he didn't turn out next summer and topple Border's mark. His 12 tons against the Old Enemy are already second only to Bradman's 19.

Against India, Smith sits in fourth spot in terms of runs scored but his 11th hundred against them, made in the 2024 Boxing Day Test, puts him atop that list, ahead of England's Joe Root (10).

Smith makes statement with 33rd Test century

First-innings freak

Perhaps only Bradman aside, cricket has not seen a first-innings force like Smith; a tick over half his runs (5,016) have come in the first of the four innings of a match. While Sachin Tendulkar (5,608 at 65.97) and Ponting (5,403 at 61.39) have scored more runs, neither comes close to Smith's average of 83.60, while his tally of 24 first-innings hundreds is the most in Test history.

The flipside to this is an interesting quirk in the 35-year-old's record; of his 35 Test hundreds, not one has come in the fourth innings (the closest he has come so far is 92no v West Indies in Brisbane, Jan 2024).

Magnificent in Melbourne

Smith's most recent Boxing Day hundred made Melbourne his most prolific Test venue; his fifth century pulled him clear of his efforts in Sydney and Brisbane (four each). That 140 took his runs tally to 1,179 at the MCG, again ahead of his SCG total (1,059).

Partners in plunder

Smith has been involved in 60 century stands in his Test career and it's no surprise that 28 of those have been shared with members of Australia's current top six. Usman Khawaja has been his most prolific partner for century stands (11) and total runs in partnership (2,921), followed by Marnus Labuschagne (2,431), David Warner (1,841) and Travis Head (1,628).

Smith's lone triple century stand – 301 – came in partnership with Mitch Marsh at the WACA Ground during the 2017-18 Ashes; Smith's 239 in that innings is also his highest Test score. In February 2016, Smith and Joe Burns added 289 for the third wicket against New Zealand in Christchurch, while Chris Rogers (284 v England at Lord's, 2015) and Labuschagne (251 v West Indies in Perth, 2022) were his partners in his other 250-run stands.

An Ashes ace

Smith's best Ashes stretch came across two series and surpassed even the Don. In eight innings – bookended by his 239 in Perth in December 2017, and his 211 in Manchester in September 2019 – Smith scored 1,089 runs, bettering Bradman's most productive eight-innings stretch of 1,069 runs, which took in his legendary 334 at Leeds in 1930.

Milestone man Smith surges to 35th Test century

Man of the century

Smith's 35th hundred put him into seventh spot in Test cricket, while among Australians, only Ponting (41) is ahead of him. Two more would put him clear into fifth spot on the Test century-makers list, though his contemporaries Root (36) and Kane Williamson (33) are likely to influence that list as well.

Ruling the rankings

Smith reached 947 rating points on the ICC rankings on December 30, 2017 – second only to Bradman's 961 rating points (achieved in 1948). It was two-and-a-half years after he achieved the No.1 rankings spot for the first time – a position he held through much of the middle part of the 2010s.

Smith occupied top spot most recently in December 2020, while his slip to 11th before the recent Gabba Test was the first time he had dropped outside the top 10 in more than a decade. After his century in Brisbane, however, he climbed back into 10th spot, while a 35th Test hundred in Galle, Sri Lanka pushed him up to 8th.

NRMA Insurance Men's Test Series v India

First Test: India won by 295 runs

Second Test: Australia won by 10 wickets

Third Test: Match drawn

Fourth Test: December 26-30: MCG, Melbourne, 10.30am AEDT

Fifth Test: January 3-7: SCG, Sydney, 10.30am AEDT

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Sean Abbott, Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Travis Head (vc), Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Sam Konstas, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Jhye Richardson, Steve Smith (vc), Mitchell Starc, Beau Webster

India squad: Rohit Sharma (c), Jasprit Bumrah (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Devdutt Padikkal, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant, Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar. Reserves: Mukesh Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed, Yash Dayal