Steve Smith's Test record in England

For someone who actually made his arrival in the big game of cricket as a leg spinner, having watched Warne and others upon growing up, to actually rise as a prominent Test match batter and one of the best the game has seen across both ODI and Test formats, Steve Smith has come quite a long way in his cricketing journey. The scorer of 10,271 Test match international runs, it's crazy to think, was at one point, a number 7 batter in the Australian line up.

But pressure, the workload of scoring the bulwark of the team's runs and in having to always please and excite the fans by virtue of the musings of his bat have for long been Steve Smith's great strengths.

And these are ecstatic qualities, that truth be told, have so often allowed other special talents, if not the same gene of batters of his own level of genius, to settle in at the other end. Think of the Marsh brothers with Mitch still being in the sport and then the big name called Travis Head.

As an excellent all-weather performer for the bat, Steve Smith does actually bring more than his exceptional run-making experience to a bevy of talents that currently make up the Aussie Test playing XI; his mere presence, confidence and the great Test playing experience - echoed by 116 outings in Test whites, leading to 206 innings with the bat - offer Australia the comfort of a titan of the sport. Does it not?

But having said that, here's a line of thought that not many would have actually thought a great deal about:

So distinctly cool and smoothly effective has Steven Smith's career been, particularly at the Test match level, that it doesn't strike the fan much about his numbers against the very opponent he will be soon seeing locking horns against. South Africa!

So just how good has Smith been? In a simple straightforward way, it suffices to note that the dogged right hander has already scored 854 runs against the Proteas, a team that he's so often fired against, his batting average of 45 clearly suggesting that.

That being said, what is of paramount importance at the moment is to dwell into Steven Smith's batting numbers in English playing conditions, for the big magnum opus among contests isn't taking place in Australia!

Here's a look at how Steven Smith has performed with the bat in England, a territory where past captains unleashed upon the great middle order batter a flurry of varied talents, including legends like Stuart Broad and James Anderson, both of whom are England's national treasures.

It ought to be noted that with such an exceptional batting record in England, Steve Smith will remain a force to be reckoned with South Africa having their work cut out. But just to give a sense of how strong Smith has been at this venue, it must be noted that when he first batted here at Lord's, venue of the big final contest of WTC, he made twice single-digit scores. But next, upon arriving here to bat, a decade ago, he ended up with a sweltering double hundred. 

And when he first batted at Lord's, all he ever lasted for were for 28 odd deliveries, the next, he would bat for 394 odd deliveries, that's nearly batting at the venue for the equivalent of one full ODI innings. 

Are South Africa noting this?