Rejuvenated Smith raring to go

"I walked out of my first hit and told Ron (Andrew McDonald) straight away, can we play tomorrow? I'm ready to go. I hadn't hit a ball since I missed a full toss off Mohammed Shami in the Champions Trophy."

Steve Smith chuckles as he recounts his first nets session of the tour. If anything, he sounds more astonished by his own admission than anything else.

In any other scenario, it's not a reaction that would necessarily have invoked amusement or surprise. This is after all one of the greatest Test batters we're talking about. And it should be natural you'd think for him to feel ready for battle after a single hit in the nets at this stage of his career.

But this is Steve Smith. And he does things his own way, including when it comes to how he preps himself with the bat.

It's around this time, a couple of training sessions in after coming off an offseason, where he's talking about finding his hands. He's worrying about where his feet are. He's even at times trying to relocate his grip. Except, this time it took him only a single hit to feel like he was ready to take on Kagiso Rabada and the rest of the highly-skilled South African attack at Lord's next week.

Over to Smith himself then to put into context how odd that is.

"I had my first hit, and I was like, that felt strangely good. Normally how it works is my first hit's good, my second hit's awful, and then I'd get better from there. But both hits were just really good and I was like, hopefully it doesn't turn around now and I don't have to spend hours in the nets the next couple of days. But no, everything just sort of clicked into place immediately," he says, still pretty amazed at this unexpected circumstance.

Maybe it was expected though. Considering that Smith's lead-up to the World Test Championship final, which involved two- and-a-bit months at home in New York was an unusual one to say the least. Even if it was self-imposed, and especially since it involved the staggering practice of the 36-year-old premier batter putting his bat away completely.

"I'd normally have a bat laying around the house somewhere and just pick it up and do a bit of shadow batting and stuff. But I made a conscious decision to try and just let it go for a while. And it felt good. I made sure my bat was away. I had my golf clubs out and I was using them a little bit. But I literally did not pick up a bat until we had our first hit the other day, which is rare for me," he reveals.

"It was nice to just come back into the setup and just pick up the bat. And it kind of felt like I hadn't even stopped all this in a way. So everything felt good," he adds.

This is all part of a conscious decision that Smith says he's made over the last 18 or so months about becoming a bit more relaxed, escaping the constant glare of cricket and letting his "mind wander free", as he puts it. That's been helped along with him spending most of his nonplaying time in the USA, playing golf, posting social media clips of him soaking up all that New York has to offer.

He's also carried forward that relaxed approach to how he goes about his batting drills, starting with spending relatively lesser time hitting balls. As those who watch him in the nets routinely, would attest to.

"I think over the last couple of years, I've tried to hit less balls. I have hit so many balls in my career. I mean, it doesn't always work out that way, but it depends how I'm feeling at the time really. But kind of going into a series, I'd like to hit less just to try and keep my mental side as focused as I can when I'm out in the middle. I remember speaking to Mike Hussey about this in Perth last year. And he was like, as I got older, we've hit so many balls. What do they say, it's like riding a bike, I suppose, in a way.

"It's about having that mental side as switched on as it can be for the big moments. And you don't want to use up all your energy in the nets. There's a fine balance, of course. I'm someone that needs to feel really prepared. And I don't want to leave any stone unturned in my preparation so that when I go to the middle, I'm ready to play. I've also got to realise that the older you get, the mental side I think probably wears a little bit thinner on you. And you've got to try and be in the best space you can be in the middle to bat for long periods of time," he explains.

However different it might be to the more traditional Steve Smith prep with bat in hand, it is working as he comes to Lord's on the back of having scored 4 centuries in the last 5 Tests, a period in which he seems to have ascended back to his peak as a Test batter. A fact that's not lost on him.

Ask him about whether this is the most comfortable he's been in terms of knowing where he stands, both when it comes to his cricket and his life, Smith ponders, refers to it as a "good question" before agreeing with the assumption.

"I haven't felt under real pressure. I suppose for a long time. I feel like I've been in the team for a while and I haven't felt under a great deal of pressure.

"Probably maybe a little bit after Adelaide last year was maybe the most I've felt. And maybe why I came out the next game and was really, really hungry to get a good score in Brisbane potentially. But that was external talk and things cross my desk all the time. People send me things that people are saying. So I don't know, maybe something clicked in me and I wanted to get back to the position of being a bit more comfortable again perhaps. But it's nothing I really think about. I just kind of take it day by day, do the best I can and prepare as well as I can to go out and perform. And that's all you can really do," he says, rather pragmatically.

This perspective to give cricket a break intermittently has also allowed him to work on other facets of his life, including finding an Australian personal trainer, Nick Herod, in the US to work with. Smith has been posting regular updates from his gym on Instagram in recent weeks too for good measure.

"I've had a good sort of couple of months in New York. I've been with him (Nick) two to three times a week, trying to utilize the three months I guess that I've had off just to get strong. I feel as strong as I've probably been since maybe 2014, so it's been a good training block. I've enjoyed it. it was a really good block just to be able to do a few different things that I probably hadn't done before, a few different exercises that I felt have been beneficial. I feel like my hips are probably as good as they've been in a long time. I feel like I'm getting a lot lower which I think will benefit me in the slips potentially. So, always trying to improve and just getting strong and more mobile. I'm getting older now, 36, so it's nice to sort of be able to have that period to do that," says Smith.

It is intriguing then to find out where golf, to which Smith was a late convert, fits into the equation of the legendary Test batter's freer, less rigid outlook towards his batting.

"Mentally it ruins me actually (Laughs). I don't hit them as straight as I'd like, that's my problem. No, I think it's a cool game. I only got into it a couple of years ago. A lot of the guys have played obviously for a long time.

"You can talk about whatever you want on the course. It's just nice to get out and about. We obviously had a good little trip to Scotland before this. Good bit of bonding, everyone was playing. We had a good time and some beautiful courses as well. It was beneficial for us all to get back together again after a long period of time.

"It's a fun game. It's a frustrating game and one that I wish I was a little bit better at. Maybe in the future I'll have a bit more time and get better," he says with another chuckle.

Does that mean that Marnus Labuschagne and he talk more about golf as much as they do about batting? And pat comes the reply from Smith.

"No, absolutely not. I've got to have time for something else." That something else though no longer consists of thousands of balls faced in the nets. For, Steve Smith is doing things a lot differently these days.