Is Steve Smith an Anomaly in Test Cricket?

Steve Smith’s Test career does not follow the usual shape we associate with an all-time great batter.

Most elite Test batters spend their early years learning, rise toward their peak in their late 20s or early 30s, enjoy several dominant seasons, and then gradually decline as age catches up with them.

Smith almost seems to have done things backwards.

He went from an uncertain leg-spinning all-rounder to a statistical monster unusually quickly, reached numbers that belonged in conversations with Don Bradman, maintained an extraordinary average for years—and then began declining during a period when many great batters historically have been at their most productive.

So, is Steve Smith genuinely an anomaly in Test cricket?

Yes—but perhaps not for exactly the reason we first think.

His decline is real. His career average has fallen considerably from its extraordinary peak. But calling it a collapse misses something important: Smith became so dominant so early that even a significant decline still leaves him producing numbers most Test batters would happily accept.

And comparing his career graph with Ricky Ponting’s makes that point fascinatingly clear.

Steve Smith Did Not Actually Start With a Bang

There is an important correction to make before analysing Smith's career.

Steve Smith did not arrive in Test cricket looking like a future batting genius.

Quite the opposite.

He debuted for Australia in 2010 primarily as a leg-spinning all-rounder and initially batted as low as No. 8. After his first five Tests, Smith had scored only 259 runs at an average of 28.78. He then spent more than two years outside Australia's Test side.

That makes what happened next even more remarkable.

By the end of 2014, after 25 Tests, Smith's career average had climbed to 50.38. Only one Test earlier, before the Boxing Day Test against India, he had been averaging 47.75 from 24 matches.

So Smith's anomaly is not that he was instantly great.

It is that his transformation happened extraordinarily quickly.

He effectively went from a player averaging below 30 after five Tests to one averaging above 50 after 25.

That is the first unusual feature of the Smith career graph.

Steve Smith vs Ricky Ponting: Two Very Different Roads to Greatness

Ricky Ponting provides an intriguing comparison because both men became dominant Australian middle-order batters, both accumulated more than 10,000 Test runs, and both eventually reached career averages close to 60.

But they got there in almost opposite ways.

Ponting's rise was gradual.

Smith's was explosive.

Around 25 Tests: Smith Was Already Ahead

By his 25th Test, Smith's average had reached approximately 50.38.

Ponting, at a similar stage of his career, was still hovering around the 40 mark.

That alone was not extraordinary. Plenty of future greats take time to develop.

Ponting's first 50 Tests illustrate that perfectly.

At 50 Tests: The Gap Became Enormous

Smith completed his 50th Test with:

• 4,752 runs
• 17 centuries
• 60.15 batting average

At the time, only Don Bradman, Herbert Sutcliffe and Jack Hobbs had also averaged above 60 after 50 Tests.

Ricky Ponting after 50 Tests had scored 3,081 runs at an average of 44.65.

That is approximately a 15.5-run difference per dismissal.

For two players who would eventually occupy similar territory in Australia's list of greatest Test batters, that gap was enormous.

Smith had effectively reached statistical superstardom before Ponting had reached his true prime.

Then Ponting Started Chasing Smith

This is where the comparison becomes really interesting.

Ponting's career trajectory accelerated dramatically after his relatively modest first 50 Tests.

During the early and middle 2000s, he became one of the most dominant batters in world cricket.

Between 2002 and 2006, Ponting scored more than 6,000 Test runs while averaging above 70 across that extraordinary five-year period. By his 107th Test, his career average had reached 59.99.

Think about what that means.

At 50 Tests:

Smith: 60.15
Ponting: 44.65

A gigantic difference.

But after Ponting's 100th Test:

Smith after 100 Tests: 9,137 runs at 58.94
Ponting after 100 Tests: 8,253 runs at 57.71

Suddenly, the difference was only a little over one run in batting average.

Ponting had almost completely erased Smith's statistical advantage.

That tells us something important about how misleading early-career comparisons can sometimes be.

The Career Curves Tell Two Completely Different Stories

A simplified version of their trajectories looks something like this:

Smith's current numbers are remarkable even after the decline.

As of September 2026, he has played 125 Tests, scoring 10,920 runs at 56.00, with 37 centuries and 45 fifties.

Ponting eventually finished with 13,378 runs from 168 Tests at 51.85, including 41 centuries.

But the shape of those careers is almost inverted.

Ponting had to climb toward greatness.

Smith had to descend from an almost impossible statistical height.

Smith's Real Anomaly Was His Peak

This may be the most important point.

Looking only at Smith's falling career average can create the impression that something went badly wrong.

But consider the starting point of that decline.

Smith was not falling from 52.

He was falling from numbers above 60.

At various stages of his prime, Smith's career average crossed 60 and moved beyond 62. During the 2010s he produced numbers almost unimaginable for a modern batter.

For the period used by the ICC when naming him its Men's Test Player of the Decade, Smith scored 7,040 runs in 69 Tests at 65.79, with 26 centuries.

For several years, the statistical question surrounding Smith was not whether he belonged with the best players of his generation.

It was whether anybody since Bradman had produced a comparable sustained peak.

That creates an unusual problem when evaluating his later career.

A player averaging 45 after previously averaging 62 looks like he is failing.

A normal Test batter averaging 45 looks extremely good.

Smith became a victim of his own statistical standard.

What Happened After Smith's 100th Test?

Here we can quantify the decline.

Smith completed his 100th Test with:

9,137 runs at 58.94.

He currently has:

10,920 runs at 56.00 after 125 Tests.

Using his dismissals across those two points, Smith has effectively averaged roughly 44.6 runs per dismissal during Tests 101-125.

For almost any international batter, an average around 45 is excellent.

For Steve Smith, it represents a substantial decline.

That distinction matters.

Smith has not suddenly become a poor Test batter.

He has gone from producing historically abnormal numbers to producing merely very good ones.

Has Steve Smith Actually Crumbled?

"Crumbled" is probably too strong.

There has undoubtedly been a decline.

Cricket Australia noted in early 2025 that Smith had averaged about 43.31 across the previous 45 Tests, approximately three-quarters of the output represented by his overall career average at the time.

There were also visible droughts.

Between June 2023 and December 2024, Smith went 23 Test innings without scoring a century.

For someone whose hundreds had once seemed almost inevitable, that looked dramatic.

But then something very Smith-like happened.

He started scoring hundreds again.

He made centuries against India, followed them with 141 and 131 in Sri Lanka, and later produced another Ashes century.

During the 2025-26 Ashes, Smith scored 286 runs from four Tests at 57.20, including 138 in Sydney.

Australia's two Tests against Bangladesh in August 2026 then brought Smith 157 runs at 52.33.

Those are not the numbers of a batter who can no longer play Test cricket.

They are the numbers of an ageing great whose performances have become less relentlessly dominant.

That is very different.

Ponting Shows What the Final Stage Can Look Like

Ponting's career offers a warning—and perhaps the reason this comparison is so compelling.

At his statistical peak in December 2006, Ponting had:

• 107 Tests
• 9,239 runs
• 33 centuries
• 59.99 average

He was effectively one run away from becoming a 60-average batter after more than 100 Tests.

Then the decline came.

From 2007 onward, Ponting's production fell considerably. One analysis places his average across his final 59 Tests at about 40.14.

His career average eventually dropped from 59.99 to 51.85.

That is an enormous decline in a cumulative batting average.

Yet nobody seriously believes the decline erased the greatness that came before it.

It simply became part of Ponting's complete career.

Smith may now be entering a similar stage.

The difference is that Smith reached his statistical summit much earlier.

Why Smith's Career Graph Is So Unusual

Several factors make Smith's trajectory particularly strange.

1. He Became Elite Extremely Quickly

Smith's first five Tests gave almost no indication that he would become one of the greatest Test batters ever.

Then his transformation was extraordinary.

After returning to the Test side in 2013, Smith scored 8,854 runs at 61.49 across his next 94 Tests before his 100th appearance.

That is not ordinary career development.

That is a player effectively rebuilding himself into a completely different cricketer.

2. His Prime Was Too Good to Sustain Easily

An average above 60 is extraordinarily difficult to maintain across a long career.

One bad series barely affects a player averaging 40.

For somebody attempting to remain above 60 after thousands of runs, every prolonged lean period drags the cumulative number downward.

Smith created such an enormous statistical standard during his prime that normal regression looks dramatic.

3. Modern Test Batting Has Become Harder

Smith's later career has also coincided with a difficult period for top-order Test batting.

An ABC analysis found that Test openers in the 2020s were averaging 32.87, compared with 35.16 in the 2010s and 37.17 in the 2000s. No. 3 batters had fallen from 43.41 in the 2000s to 34.96 in the 2020s.

The reasons are debated.

Improved pace attacks, wobble-seam bowling, greener pitches, scheduling and ball characteristics may all contribute.

Smith himself has argued that changes to the Kookaburra ball combined with greener pitches have made batting more difficult.

Therefore, comparing Smith's 2020s decline directly with Ponting's 2000s peak requires some context.

They were not batting in identical environments.

The Age Question: Do Great Batters Naturally Decline in Their Late 30s?

This brings us to perhaps the most interesting hypothesis.

Smith is now 37.

Can a batter's reflexes, reactions and physical capabilities simply stop behaving as they did at 28 or 30?

Broadly, the answer is yes—but batting is more complicated than raw reaction speed.

Research examining Test batters has found a broadly parabolic career trajectory: performance rises, reaches a plateau or peak, and eventually declines. One study of leading Pakistan Test batters found that most reached peak performance between approximately 28 and 34 years of age.

Separate research using historical ODI data also found an inverted-U relationship between age and batting performance, with batters tending to peak around 27-30 before physical decline gradually outweighed the benefits gained from experience.

That supports the general idea behind the traditional batting career curve.

But cricket batting is not simply:

See ball → react quickly → hit ball.

Elite batters use anticipation.

They pick up information from a bowler's movement, release position, game situation, field placement and previous deliveries. Research into cricket batting has repeatedly examined how expert anticipation contributes to performance, including the use of information available before the ball has completed its flight.

Experience therefore compensates for some physical decline.

That is why elite batters can continue performing well into their mid- and late-30s.

The issue is eventually one of balance.

Experience continues increasing.

Physical capability eventually decreases.

At some point, experience can no longer compensate completely.

The First Sign Is Not Always Missing the Fast Ball

Ageing batting decline is often described too simply.

People imagine an older batter suddenly becoming unable to see 145 km/h bowling.

Usually it is subtler than that.

A tiny reduction in reaction speed can mean getting slightly later into position.

Footwork becomes marginally less decisive.

A defensive movement that once covered both seam directions now covers one.

A player who previously punished the first small bowling error every 15 deliveries may now miss it.

Concentration becomes harder to maintain across repeated long innings.

Recovery between Tests becomes slower.

Those tiny differences accumulate.

The result may not be obvious while watching one innings.

But over 30 innings, they appear in the batting average.

Smith Has Another Weapon: Adaptation

There is one reason to be cautious about predicting a straightforward decline for Steve Smith.

His entire career has been built around adaptation.

His technique has never been static.

Trigger movements change.

Guard changes.

His movement across the crease changes.

His hands change.

His stance changes.

Even late in his career, Cricket Australia's analysis highlighted how Smith continued modifying his trigger movement while trying to solve technical problems. Smith himself has said that the day he no longer wants to work through those batting problems may be the day he knows he has had enough.

That ability to self-correct is arguably his greatest skill.

His unusual technique receives attention.

His unusual brain may matter more.

Could Steve Smith Have Another Prime?

Probably not in the traditional meaning of the word.

A sustained return to averaging 70-plus across several seasons at age 37 would be historically extraordinary.

But that does not mean another major productive phase is impossible.

There is an important difference between:

returning to your physical prime

and

discovering another technically successful version of yourself.

Smith does not need to become the 2014-2019 version again.

If late-career Smith can average somewhere around 45-55 while still producing decisive hundreds, his career can remain enormously valuable to Australia.

His recent results already show why declaring his elite phase completely finished would be premature.

The 2025-26 Ashes produced 286 runs at 57.20.

The 2026 Bangladesh series produced another 157 at 52.33.

At 37, that is evidence that the ceiling remains high.

The question is whether he can produce those performances consistently enough to stop his cumulative average continuing its gradual descent.

Smith and Ponting May Eventually Finish Much Closer Than Anyone Expected

This is perhaps the most fascinating possibility.

At 50 Tests, imagining Smith and Ponting finishing with similar batting averages would have seemed absurd.

Smith was averaging 60.15.

Ponting was averaging 44.65.

Yet after 100 Tests:

Smith was at 58.94.

Ponting was at 57.71.

And Ponting eventually finished at 51.85.

Smith currently sits at 56.00 after 125 Tests.

The next 20 or 30 Tests—if he plays that many—could significantly reshape his final statistics.

Suppose Smith averages around 40 over the remainder of his career.

His career average will continue falling.

If he averages approximately 50, the decline becomes much slower.

If he produces one final burst of elite run-scoring, finishing above 55 becomes considerably more realistic.

That is what makes the final stage of an all-time great career so statistically fascinating.

A career average is not a measurement of how good someone is today.

It is the accumulated history of everything that came before.

And That Is Why Comparing Great Batters Only by Final Average Can Be Misleading

Imagine two batters.

Player A averages around 55 almost continuously for 15 years.

Player B spends six years averaging approximately 70, then declines significantly and ultimately finishes around 55.

Their final averages might be identical.

Their careers were not.

The cumulative number hides the shape.

This matters when discussing Smith, Ponting, Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Kumar Sangakkara, Jacques Kallis and other great Test batters.

Some developed slowly.

Some exploded early.

Some had enormous middle-career peaks.

Some maintained extraordinary consistency.

Some declined sharply.

Some retired while still close to their peak.

The final batting average tells us how productive the whole career was.

The career graph tells us how greatness happened.

And Smith's graph is one of the strangest of the modern era.

So, Is Steve Smith an Anomaly?

Yes.

But not because he suddenly became bad halfway through his career.

Steve Smith is an anomaly because his rise happened unusually early, his peak reached an almost unsustainable statistical altitude, and his decline began from a position few Test batters have ever occupied.

Ricky Ponting represents almost the reverse journey.

Ponting's first 50 Tests produced a very good but relatively ordinary average of 44.65.

Then came the explosion.

He climbed toward 60.

Smith reached 60 first.

Then came the gradual descent.

By 100 Tests, their paths had almost crossed.

That is the fascinating part.

Smith's current average of 56.00 after 125 Tests remains exceptional.

But the numbers also clearly tell us that the version of Smith who once seemed capable of living permanently above 60 is probably gone.

That does not necessarily mean his greatness is gone with it.

At 37, the battle changes.

It becomes less about establishing how good you can become and more about how long technique, anticipation, experience and adaptation can compensate for the inevitable physical decline of an ageing athlete.

Ponting eventually lost that battle.

So did almost every great batter before him.

Smith will too.

The fascinating question is when.

And perhaps that is the final stage of the Steve Smith anomaly: after spending most of his career defying what a normal Test batting graph should look like, he now gets one last opportunity to defy the normal ending as well.

Time will tell.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Steve Smith's Test batting average?

As of September 2026, Steve Smith has scored 10,920 runs from 125 Tests at an average of 56.00, with 37 centuries and 45 half-centuries.

What was Steve Smith's average after 50 Tests?

Smith averaged 60.15 after 50 Tests, having scored 4,752 runs with 17 centuries. At the time, he joined an extremely small group of batters who had maintained an average above 60 through 50 Test matches.

What was Ricky Ponting's average after 50 Tests?

Ricky Ponting had scored 3,081 runs at an average of 44.65 after 50 Tests. His greatest period of run-scoring came later in his career.

Who had the better record after 100 Tests, Steve Smith or Ricky Ponting?

Smith had the stronger aggregate. After 100 Tests, Smith had 9,137 runs at 58.94, while Ponting had 8,253 runs at 57.71. The remarkable part is how much Ponting had closed the enormous gap that existed between them after 50 Tests.

What was Ricky Ponting's highest Test batting average?

Ponting reached 59.99 after 107 Tests in December 2006. He eventually retired with an average of 51.85 after 168 Tests.

Has Steve Smith passed his prime?

Statistically, Smith's most dominant period appears to be behind him. His output has declined significantly from the extraordinary averages he produced during his peak years. However, recent performances—including averaging 57.20 in the 2025-26 Ashes and 52.33 against Bangladesh in 2026—show that he remains capable of producing elite Test innings.

Why has Steve Smith's Test average declined?

Age is likely only part of the explanation. Smith has entered his late 30s, modern Test batting conditions have been difficult, bowling strategies have evolved, and maintaining an average near 60 becomes increasingly difficult across a long career. His decline should therefore be viewed as a combination of ageing, conditions, opposition adaptation and regression from an historically exceptional peak.

At what age do Test batters usually peak?

There is no universal age, but research analysing Test batting performance has found many elite batters reaching their peak between approximately 28 and 34 years old. Other cricket research has similarly identified an inverted-U relationship between age and batting performance.

Can Steve Smith return to his old prime?

A sustained return to his extraordinary 60-plus or 70-plus prime-level output would be difficult at age 37. However, Smith does not need to recreate his absolute peak to remain one of Australia's most valuable Test batters. His technical adaptability and recent performances suggest another productive late-career phase remains entirely possible.

Is Steve Smith one of the greatest Test batters ever?

His statistical record comfortably places him among the most prolific Test batters of the modern era. More unusually, his peak included prolonged periods averaging above 60, while the ICC named him its Men's Test Player of the Decade for the 2010s-era awards period after he scored 7,040 runs at 65.79.

What makes Steve Smith's career different from Ricky Ponting's?

Their timing is the biggest difference. Smith reached historically elite batting numbers relatively early and has gradually declined from them. Ponting developed more slowly before producing his greatest statistical period around the middle of his career and then experiencing a substantial late-career decline. Their career averages converged dramatically despite taking almost opposite paths to reach that point.