Smith tops Ponting in first-innings tons, only behind Bradman in the Ashes
A look at the Australian batter's 32nd Test century by the numbers
Sampath Bandarupalli
29-Jun-2023
Steven Smith walks off after scoring 110 • PA Images via Getty Images
32 Centuries for Steven Smith in Test cricket are the joint-second most for Australia in the format. Ricky Ponting tops the list with 41 hundreds, while Steve Waugh also has 32 tons.
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174 Innings Smith needed to score his 32nd Test century, the fewest among the 12 players with the feat. The previous quickest was Ponting, who scored his 32nd Test ton in the 176th innings he batted.
22 Hundreds for Smith in the first innings of Test matches, the most for any batter, surpassing Ponting's 21 tons. Seven of Smith's 22 centuries came when the team was put into bat, the joint-most, alongside Jacques Kallis.
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8 Test hundreds for Smith in England, the second-most by any visiting player in the country, behind only Sir Donald Bradman's eleven tons. Smith has seven of those eight centuries against England, while another came against India in the WTC final earlier this month.
12 Test centuries for Smith against England. Only Bradman (19 against England) and Sunil Gavaskar (13 against West Indies) have more triple-digit scores versus an opponent in Test cricket than Smith.
1 Number of players to complete 9000 Test runs in fewer innings than Smith's 174 innings. Kumar Sangakkara is the fastest to the 9000-run milestone, needing only 172 innings. Smith, however, is the fastest in terms of Tests played to complete 9000 runs, as he needed only 99 matches, while the previous fastest was Brian Lara in 103 games.
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12 Smith's hundreds in the Ashes. Only Bradman's 19 tons rank higher in the Ashes, while Jack Hobbs also has 12 centuries. Smith is also now the fourth-highest run-getter in the Ashes with 3176 runs.
2014 Test runs scored by Smith in England. Only three other visiting players have scored 2000-plus runs in England - Bradman (2674), Allan Border (2082) and Viv Richards (2014).
Sampath Bandarupalli is a statistician at ESPNcricinfo