Steven Smith's rare twin hundreds in first Test of an away series

Steven Smith in an elite company
August 04, 2019

5 Number of Australia batsmen to score centuries in both innings of a Test in The Ashes. Steven Smith joins Warren Bardsley, Arthur Morris, Steve Waugh and Matthew Hayden in doing so. For England, Herbert Sutcliffe, Wally Hammond, and Denis Compton have achieved the feat.

2002 The last time any batsman scored twins tons in an Ashes Test. It was Hayden in Brisbane in the 2002-03 Ashes. Before Smith, only two of the seven instances of twins tons in Ashes had come in England - Bardsley (The Oval) and Waugh (Old Trafford). Overall, Smith is only the second to do so at Edgbaston; the first was Marcus Trescothick against West Indies in 2004.

6 Number of centuries for Smith in his last 10 Ashes innings. He has scored 1116 runs in these 10 innings. Bradman is the only batsman to have better numbers in any span of 10 successive Ashes innings. He scored 1236 runs and 7 hundreds between 1937 and 1946 in 10 innings.

10 Centuries in Ashes for Smith now - five in Australia and five in England. Only Bradman (19) and Jack Hobbs (12) have hit more Ashes centuries than Smith, although Waugh also hit 10. Bradman, Waugh, Allan Border and Mark Taylor are the only other Australia batsmen to score five or more centuries in England.

3 Smith is only the third visiting batsman to score two centuries in the first Test of a series in England and none has done it in the last 70 years. George Headley did so at Lord's in 1939 and Alan Melville in 1947. Usually the batsmen don't find English conditions easy and scoring hundreds at the start of the series is not easy. Smith is also coming back into Test cricket after more than a year, following his ban for ball-tampering. Overall, Smith is only the tenth batsman to score two hundreds in the first Test of an away series and last was Virat Kohli in Australia in 2014-15.

25 Centuries for Smith in his Test career, in 119 innings. Only Bradman, in 68 innings, had achieved it in fewer innings. Smith has followed Kohli (127 innings), Sachin Tendulkar (130) and Sunil Gavaskar (138) in terms of fewest innings to 25 Test 100s. He is now tied with Kohli on 25 Test centuries.

4 Number of batsmen to score 140 or more in both innings of a Test, including Smith with scores of 144 and 142 in this match. Allan Border, Andy Flower, and Tillakaratne Dilshan are the others to have achieved the double.

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