How do you get Steve Smith out? Richard Hadlee unravels the mystery

Speaking to Stuffon the toughest batsman to dismiss, the most aggravating, the most dominant and most complete, Hadlee, New Zealand’s highest wicket-taker in Tests, said: "But I never bowled to anyone as unorthodox as [Smith]. And I would find it very annoying bowling to him, like many others have, because of his batting routine and how fidgety he is when he faces up."

Smith proved next to impossible to dismiss during the Ashes series in England, where Australia retained the urn, on the back of the former captain’s 774 runs in seven innings, at an average of 110.57. The million dollar question of how he could be dismissed was the running theme as Australia insured themselves against a Test series defeat in England for the first time since 2001.

Weighing in on the topic, Hadlee said: “Stick to the basics of attacking that off stump, whether he plays at you or lets you go, so be it. You've got to try to get him out early with a nick or a ball coming back and hitting him on the pads. The way he comes right across in front of the stumps, if he misses he's going to be dead most times, but he doesn't miss often."

Hadlee’s observations are drawn from two of Smith’s dismissals in the Ashes. At Lord’s, after returning to bat from a blow to the head by Jofra Archer, Smith shouldered arms to a straight ball from Chris Woakes that would’ve crashed into middle stump.

Then, in the final Test at The Oval, against the same bowler, Smith walked across his stumps to another straight ball and missed it, angled from around the off-stump line and thudding into middle and leg. "Bowlers will get frustrated and try and do too much,” Hadlee said. “And get too straight, and he'll just ping you on the leg side, then you go wider and he'll smash you through the off side. There will be a time if you can't get him out, you've just got to be patient: 'there's my line, if you want to play at me you do it'.

"If it's six inches outside off stump or three inches outside off stump, you've just got to stay there, stay there until he makes a mistake. In the meantime, he'll collect runs, invariably hundreds, the way he's going."

Hadlee also said that the eccentricities of Smith’s body language at the crease can put off bowlers. Calling it a mind game, Hadlee likened Smith’s unusual demeanour to Javed Miandad’s ability to demoralise attacks with the way he batted.

"He's difficult, and those idiosyncrasies, where he lets the ball go and arcs his bat and turns his body, gosh, that would annoy me,” Hadlee said. "It's a mind game, and the signals he gives the bowler and fielding team is that 'I'm in total control here, you're not going to get me out, whatever you do. I can play you'.

"It's something Javed Miandad did, he egged the bowlers on with the way he batted. Different technique, but it's a psychological approach and it can have a hugely negative effect."

Hadlee, however, said that with time bowlers will find a way around the star batsman, once his form invariably dips. "He may start to think 'I'm not as invincible as I have been and people have worked me out'. Some negativity could come into his game.

"At the moment, he's on an extreme high and bowlers will fear him. Until that other situation happens, he'll march on and score a lot of runs.”