This was a waiting game, and Steve Smith won it.
Both teams were waiting for weather, and it seemed to make them mutually wary, neither wanting to make reckless haste and give the other a break. Meantime, both waited also for the new ball, knowing that on this pitch, in this sapping heat, it held all the aces, and both waited for the pitch to shed its same-every-day blandness, and it never did. When the weather did come, later than predicted, all had to wait again.
Usman Khawaja waited all night on 95, and when play resumed waited out 11 dot balls in a row before adding, and that was waiting enough. When Wahab Riaz pitched wide, he dashed at it and was caught behind. It had been the same in Hobart: a string of scoreless balls, a waft, a dismissal. NB, opponents: for a player to whom runmaking is as natural as respiration, maiden overs are like being made to hold your breath. Eventually, it has to come out.
Steve Smith waited.
Peter Handscomb had waited and waited. Victoria's finest, he might have imagined walking out to bat on Boxing Day to a royal reception, but now it was day four, with 7000 in attendance rather than 70,000, and most of them were cowering in the shadows anyway.
Wahab won't die waiting and wondering, except for front-foot replays, and soon was at Handscomb, and so was Mohammed Amir, testing him with short ball and full, the one to cramp him, the other to tunnel him, and though he missed half a dozen, he hit the ones that mattered. When Yasir Shah took up the attack, Handscomb did not hesitate to come down the wicket, or else when the length was right to sweep majestically, for there is waiting and there is getting bogged down, and Handscomb doesn't confuse them.
Thus he took the majority of the strike, and outpaced Smith for runmaking, and with a fine glance from Wahab reached another Test fifty. But he played too soon at Amir and should have been caught-and-bowled, and again at Sohail Khan and sent a catch to point, and kicked himself, for if he has shown one thing in first-class cricket, it is that he knows how to wait.
Smith watched.
Nic Maddinson waited longer than Handscomb, and with greater trepidation, for his fledgling career was on the line and everyone knew it. This time, for the first time, he had the tempo of Test cricket, and after an hour might have begun to imagine a future for himself in this waiting game. Then he galloped out at Yasir, and somehow played inside the line of his leg-spinner, and was bowled, the jittery dismissal of a man in too much of a hurry. His next wait will be to play another Test, and in the aghast moment of his dismissal, he seemed to grasp this.
Smith waited.
Matthew Wade tried to wait, but it is not really in him. He cut hard at Sohail and was caught at slip. Now he, too, will nervously wait the pleasure of the selectors, for he was picked again for his edge in batting – an oblique criterion for a wicketkeeper – and in three matches has not yet reached double figures.
Smith waited and watched.
Mitch Starc didn't wait. By way of introduction, he blasted Yasir 103 metres, far into the Great Southern Stand. But he is a bowler.
Smith waited again.
He had waited at day's beginning as Amir bowled 10 dot balls at him, because that is what you do in Test cricket. He had waited as Pakistan tried to stalemate him outside off stump, for that is also what you do. He had waited for the new ball's danger to recede, waited for the heat to take its toll on the bowlers, waited for them to come to him.
He had waited while others could not or would not.
This much we know about Smith, that he wasn't waiting because he had no other option. Not only can he play all the shots, when circumstances dictate, he can invent new shots, along with the best of them. But this was Test cricket, the waiting game.
Australia had played itself into a strong position, but not yet winning. David Warner and his turbocharger were gone, and so was Khawaja's cream machine, and the rest of the batting order was still at the prototype stage, and thunderstorms were coming – but when? – and so Australia's only hope of winning this match was to make all the runs it could in this innings, but for now, it was still 160 runs behind, and so responsibility sat mightily on his shoulders. He is the captain.
And so he waited. Everyone knows about his tics and twitches and eccentricities, but this day he was the veritable minimalist: back, across, play – or just as often leave – wait. Cut to point, four balls in a row, wait. The fifth would surely go, and it did.
Change gloves, shovel the ball to fine leg for four, wait. Wait on Yasir until, there, a little width, drive, four. Wait. Keep vigil for the luckless Amir's away-cutter; one got through him, but only one. Scratch guard, wait.
The scoreboard ticked over at three runs an over rather than five. Clouds gathered, the light dimmed, the floodlights lit up. Wait. The umps conferred; wait.
At last, there came a ball from Sohail to cut, and cut Smith did, and so reached 100, his fourth of yet another 1000-run year, his 17th overall. It had taken him nearly five hours and 168 balls, but that was what was called for on the day, and Smith is both at the peak of his batting powers and at a new level of maturity in his captaincy, and so knew all this without saying it. Australia was in front, and safe, and could start to plot a way to victory, and yet again, good things had come to he who had waited.
Two balls later, the rains came, and it was back to the waiting.