Smith's path from Sydney suburbs to history books

A few hundred fans bore witness to history at the seaside stadium in Galle, where Smith last week joined Allan Border, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting among Australians to pass 10,000 runs.

Smith clipped a ball to mid on and scampered to the other end, raising his bat first tentatively and then enthusiastically to a crowd on its feet.

By stumps on day one, he'd come up with a 35th Test century, first whacking legspinner Jeffrey Vandersay en route to a quick 50 and then taking his foot off the gas en route to three figures.

Some 8,700 kilometres and nearly 19 years removed from the Test series in tropical Sri Lanka, Woodhill had picked a 16-year-old Smith for his first-grade debut at Sutherland.

Smith in his first home Test summer, when he struggled with bat and ball in an Ashes series defeat. (Paul Miller/AAP PHOTOS)

Woodhill remembers first setting eyes on the teenaged Smith playing touch football with his much older teammates at Glenn McGrath Oval.

Fleet of foot, quick with a dummy, Smith smoked them with the footy that day. What could he do with the willow?

Sutherland's chief selector Evan Atkins wanted to find out, and convinced a slightly skeptical Woodhill to pick Smith in the side's batting order to face Gordon at Killara Oval in November of 2005.

"At the time we needed an injection of some talent and some youth," Smith's former coach told AAP.

"He got his opportunity, scored two 90s in his first three innings and never looked back."

Woodhill remembers that touch footy confidence abounding in Smith back then. Nothing seemed to faze him.

"That first game up at Killara, he was playing against some really gnarly men," Woodhill said.

"I thought they would've been quite intimidating and the pitch was doing a lot. He just figured out a way to cope."

Smith has become one of history's greatest batters despite starting as a hopeful legspinner. (Paul Miller/AAP PHOTOS)

Woodhill kept his box seat to Smith's career. The young coach left Sutherland for NSW's Under 17s side as Smith was playing Under 19s, and was an assistant at the Blues when he graduated to the first-class set-up.

By that point, Woodhill was certain there was something different about him.

Even when Smith was a teenager, the nuts and bolts of his game were tightened beyond his years; he'd already refined his stroke play, knew how to spot idiosyncrasies in the bowlers he faced.

That allowed Smith to advance above his peers, just as Border, Waugh and Ponting had before him.

"Your Pontings and your Smiths and your Borders and these guys, they figure out the mechanics of their game really early," Woodhill said.

"So they became really good leaders really early, because they could see three, four moves ahead than what others could do, because the others were still stuck with their technique."

Smith at the Boxing Day Test of 2014: The stand-in captain averaged 128 in that series. (Julian Smith/AAP PHOTOS)

It all happened fast for Smith on the international stage, his Twenty20 International, One Day International and Test debuts all coming within the space of a few months in 2010.

He had only just turned 21 when he earned his first appearance in the baggy green against Pakistan at Lord's that July.

Woodhill remembers sitting in a Manchester pub across from Smith on that same tour when it struck him his former pupil had made good on his potential.

The coach reached for his wallet to pay for the pair's meals and drinks, but Smith stopped him. Woodhill was still thinking of his dinner guest as the 15-year-old touch footy player, not one of Australia's newest international cricketers.

"He said, 'No, no, I've got this, don't worry, I'm doing OK'," Woodhill recalled.

"Every couple of years, we laugh about that, how well he's actually done."

Only two weeks later, Smith would begin a career that has reached 115 Tests.

Smith returned from his ban after the ball-tampering scandal to star in the 2019 Ashes. (AP PHOTO)

Having transformed from front-line Test legspinner to middle-order maestro, Smith first had the Test captaincy bestowed upon him when a hamstring injury ruled Michael Clarke out of the final three matches of the 2014/15 India series.

He ended with a first innings century in all four matches of that contest and was named player of the series in what was Australia's most recent Border-Gavaskar Trophy triumph until this past summer.

But perhaps the crowning achievement was his away Ashes series on return from a highly-publicised ban for his role in the 2018 ball-tampering saga.

Smith belted 774 runs across his seven innings at an average of 110.6, notably becoming the 16th Australian to score two Test centuries in the same match on return to the pitch at Edgbaston.

Even before the highlight reels, Woodhill reckons there's always been a bit of Ponting about Smith in his forensic analysis of conditions and opposition.

"The two of them are exceptional problem solvers. To get to 10,000 runs, you have to be," Woodhill said.

Smith's 56.33 average is second only to Kumar Sangakkara's 57.40 for those with 100 Tests or more. (James Ross/AAP PHOTOS)

Much was made of that in falling for four runs in the second innings of last month's SCG Test, Smith fell one short of bringing up his 10,000 before his Sydney home crowd.

It's made the location of the milestone a trivia question in the waiting.

A smattering of Australian spectators will know the answer and have a personal memory of Smith's greatness to accompany it.

When might the rest be struck by that same appreciation? Woodhill says it could be a while.

"It's never until you finish that people actually realise how good you are," he said.

"Until Steven actually goes, people will look back and go, 'Wow this guy averaged 57 when he finished'.

"He'll probably finish with high-end 30 centuries, and well over 10,000 runs. Then people will look back and go, 'Wow, he did some incredible things'."