Smith joins 10,000-Test run club after extended wait

Steve Smith has been immortalised in the 10,000-Test run club, becoming just the fourth Australian to reach a milestone he fell agonisingly short of earlier this month.

Having missed his fairytale moment in front of his home crowd at the SCG against India when he was dismissed with his career tally on 9,999 runs, Smith scored his 10,000th run on the first ball he faced in Galle on Thursday.

The right-hander had been called to the crease with Australia on 2-137 in the opening session of the first Test against Sri Lanka and immediately went on the attack. He struck a single to mid-on off Prabath Jayasuriya, drawing cheers from the crowd before sharing an embrace with batting partner Usman Khawaja.

Smith looked sheepish as he raised the bat after scoring his first run.

The 35-year-old joins Allan Border, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting as Australians to get to 10,000 Test runs. All three had been in attendance for the SCG Test.

Galle was a more a low-key affair with only a handful of Australian tour groups cheering for Smith at the quaint sea-side venue after he got off the mark on Thursday.

Only Brian Lara (111) has gotten to the milestone in fewer Tests than Smith's 115. Lara, Sachin Tendulkar, Kumar Sangakkara (all 195) and Ricky Ponting (196) are the only batters to have reached it in fewer innings.

Among active players, only Joe Root's tally of 12,972 Test runs is higher than Smith's.

Smith commenced the Australian summer 315 runs away from 10k mark. Tons in back-to-back Tests in Brisbane (scoring 101) and Melbourne (140) then brought him within touching distance coming into the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series finale.

He arrived in Sydney for the New Year's Test 38 runs short of the feat and was duly dismissed on 33 early on day two, leaving him with five to get in their fourth-innings run chase the following day.

On an increasingly tricky pitch, Smith then became the first man to be dismissed twice in the 9,990s and the first on 9,999. Prasidh Krishna got him in both innings, the second coming off a delivery that lifted significantly off an increasingly difficult surface.

"I got chainsawed didn’t I!" he told Triple M after Australia won the Border-Gavaskar Trophy for the first time in a decade. "Pretty nasty delivery actually; back of a length, I thought ‘oh, there’s one to punch through point’ and it just took off.

He had tried to put the 10,000-run milestone out of his mind before the match.

"(It's) more that I don't want to have 38 in my head when I go out to bat and start thinking about that," Smith told cricket.com.au's Unplayable Podcast this week.

"I just want to focus on the present … obviously it's a cool milestone to get to if I get there. But I want to try to keep it out of my mind as much as possible."

But, ever the tough taskmaster on himself, Smith admitted to cricket.com.au before the summer that if he did not reach 10,000 runs against India, "it won't have been a very good summer.

"It would be a huge milestone, not too many people have done it," he continued. "I'd be amongst a good group of players."

Smith had gone 24 innings without a hundred prior to the Brisbane Test against India but insisted he had not lost his touch amid suggestions his best was behind him. His back-to-back hundreds dispelled those doubts.

"I was hitting the ball really nicely," Smith, speaking to Fox Cricket after his MCG ton, said of his lean trot.

"People are saying, Is he too old? Are his eyes going? So I thought maybe I'll just go out of my crease and make my impact point closer to the bowler … so I think my eyes are still there, which is nice.

"I've said a few times, I think there's a difference between being out of form and out of runs. And I was just out of runs."

Australia will hope there are plenty more to come.

Qantas Tour of Sri Lanka

First Test: January 29-February 2, Galle (3.30pm AEDT)

Second Test: February 6-10, Galle (3.30pm AEDT)

Sri Lanka Test squad: Dhananjaya de Silva (c), Dimuth Karunaratne, Pathum Nissanka (subject to fitness), Oshada Fernando, Lahiru Udara, Dinesh Chandimal, Angelo Mathews, Kamindu Mendis, Kusal Mendis, Sadeera Samarawickrama, Sonal Dinusha, Prabath Jayasuriya, Jeffrey Vandersay, Nishan Peiris, Asitha Fernando, Vishwa Fernando, Lahiru Kumara, Milan Rathnayake

Australia Test squad: Steve Smith (c), Sean Abbott, Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cooper Connolly, Travis Head (vc), Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Sam Konstas, Matt Kuhnemann, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Nathan McSweeney, Todd Murphy, Mitchell Starc, Beau Webster

First ODI: February 12, Colombo (3.30pm AEDT)

Second ODI: February 14, Colombo (3.30pm AEDT)