There are some people who, frustratingly, are good at everything they try with minimal effort. And then there are people like Steve Smith, who are incredible at some things, like batting, and, shall we say, less good at other things.
The former Australia captain posted a video of himself covering Mitch Rosell’s All I Need To See on Facebook and Instagram, with most reviews suggesting that the best since Bradman had some way to go to be considered the best since Bowie. There were references to David Brent’s song Free Love Freeway in UK cringe comedy The Office aplenty, most variants on “He went home to get it”, an utterance by Brent’s long-suffering colleague Tim Canterbury, or “Pretty girl on the hood of a Cadillac yeah”, a choice lyric from the song, while those less culturally switched on plumped for unsubtle sandpaper references.
Even Ashley Giles got in on the act, tweeting “The bubble gets everyone eventually”. The managing director of England men’s cricket might be few people’s idea of a musical tastemaker, but he does have one claim to fame, with unconfirmed reports that The Tallest Man on Earth’s 2010 single King of Spain, in which the Swedish guitarist sings “I wanna be the king of Spain”, might be an ode to the Ashes-winning off-spinner.
https://twitter.com/Gilo/status/1313461595876528131
But back to Smith, who should at least be praised for having some hobbies that don’t involve batting, shadow batting, or batting cages. He is at least self-aware enough to know he’s not the finished article yet, captioning the video, “A bit of practice in my downtime here in Dubai. Need plenty more work though”. We say, keep on keeping on Smudge. Even the Beatles had to spend some time as the Quarrymen before making it big, and if there’s one person who’s taught us that switching disciplines can, after a time, yield dramatic results, it’s fresh-faced-leggie-turned-world’s-best-batsman Smith.
