Aaron Finch on Steven Smith: 'If you see him in New York, he's a totally different person'

Fifteen batters have scored over 10,000 runs in Test cricket, and aside from being ridiculously talented, all of them obviously had and have insatiable appetites for run-scoring. So what makes Steven Smith, the latest entrant into this exclusive club, stand apart? To start with, it's the many quirks he comes with, or as his once-time rival, the South Africa Test captain Faf du Plessis puts it: "thigh pad, thigh pad, box, glove, glove…"

In a new video series where cricketers discuss their team-mates or opponents, du Plessis and Aaron Finch dive into the Smith phenomenon, analysing what makes him tick and recalling funny but revealing incidents from their time playing with him.

du Plessis: I remember joining Rising Pune Supergiant [in 2016] at a stage where half of our team from CSK [Chennai Super Kings] went to them and the other half went to the other franchise [Gujarat Lions]. And the first impression that I got from him [Smith] was seeing him at breakfast in the hotel and going, "That's Steve Smith. He's a gun player." I went to sit next to him and I asked him a couple of questions. Normally what happens when you're having a conversation with someone, eventually there's to and fro. You ask something, I ask something. I'm 20 minutes, 30 minutes, in and I'm like, "I'm asking all the questions. It feels like this guy's got zero interest in me and my career!"

That was the first thing you understand - that he's just a little bit different in his personality, the way he comes across. Very nice guy, but just not what we're used to seeing when you go and sit next to someone and you feel that warmth. So straight away there, I was like, this guy's different. There's something different about his personality.

Finch: [Warming up to someone] is not something that comes natural to him. Like, a conversation with people is not his go-to thing. But when he's playing, he's got the ability to switch it on and off, and then you have more dialogue, you have more conversation.

If you see him in New York, where he lives now, he is a totally different person to what you see when he's in Sydney. And I think that that comes down to him being probably more incognito in New York. I feel as though that's a place where he really relaxes and enjoys and is able to probably sit back and do a bit more of what he wants rather than what he thinks he should be doing at times.

du Plessis: Yeah, his quirkiness - the first time you see it, you go: "What is this guy doing?" I remember playing him in a series in Australia where we were looking at it. And we were going: "It's thigh pad, thigh pad, box, gloves, turn." It's the same thing all the time.

So now I'm going: I need to try and upset this routine. And it was a case of getting a guy at short leg, telling the youngster: Just say whatever he's doing and just keep on repeating it. So it'd be like the guy at short leg would go: Thigh pad, thigh pad, box, box, glove, glove. And then I said: Next over, say nothing. Because all you're trying to do is just mess up the rhythm. Look, did it work? I don't know. He's still a jet of a player.

The strange thing is, though, against South Africa, I don't think his record in Test cricket was one of his better [versus a team]. Because I think he only got [one] hundred against South Africa, if I'm [not] mistaken. And that was early doors. But I don't think he got [more than one] hundred in Australia in [two] tours, which is a massive thing for him. But then you look at him in the Ashes and you go, "This guy is a genius."

Finch: But he's so competitive. It doesn't matter what it is, whether it's table-tennis, obviously cricket, but everything. He was always first on the plane, first on the bus. Being beaten by someone just doesn't enter his mind. It's like golf. For a long time, he resisted playing golf. And I don't know the exact reason, but I'm very, very confident that it was because he knew that he wasn't very good at it!

du Plessis: I actually remember that. When was Rising Pune Supergiant? 2017? Myself and Smudge were talking. Everyone was playing golf every day and he's like: I want to try. So we both went. KP [Kevin Pietersen] was there, myself and Smudge. And both of us weren't great. But Smudge just kept coming back and he started playing. And I saw him like a year ago. He was like, I love golf. Like, I'm obsessed with it. So that tells you how competitive he is.