PAK vs AUS: Steve Smith goes past Sangakkara, Sachin to achieve historic feat

Steve Smith is unarguably one of the best batters of this era. Despite not being at his best, he still manages to consistently score runs. The third Test against Pakistan saw the batting maestro score his third fifty of the series.

Advertisment

Although Smith hasn't scored a hundred in this series as of now, he has managed to score three half-centuries and has seemingly been in decent touch. On Monday, he scored 59 during Australia's first innings. This enabled him to surpass the likes of Kumar Sangakkara and even the great Sachin Tendulkar.

After being dismissed for 59, the batter took his tally of runs to 7,993 in the longest format of the game. This happens to be the highest number of runs scored by an individual batter after playing 150 innings. He broke Sangakkara's record, who had scored 7,913 runs after 150 Test innings. The next batters on this list are the Indian trio of Sachin Tendulkar (7,869), Virender Sehwag (7,694) and Rahul Dravid (7,680).

Smith now needs seven runs in his next innings to become the fastest batter to score 8000 Test runs. Alongside breaking that record, his fans would certainly want to see him get that three-figure mark. As far as the game is concerned, he and Usman Khawaja put together a massive partnership, to help Australia overcome their initial struggle.

Advertisment

The Aussie opener was dismissed for 91 and missed another well deserved hundred. Khawaja recently heaped praise on Smith and called him the "greatest batter of his era".

“I’m sure he’s frustrated in some respects. He is, in my opinion, the greatest batsman I’ve seen in my era, averaging 60 pretty much his whole Test career. I’m still in awe of how many runs he’s scored over a long period of time,” said Usman Khawaja as quoted by perthnow.com.au.

“I find it so funny we’re talking about Steve Smith not scoring 100s, he seems to be getting 70, 80 … and doing it very easily. That’s just the class Steve Smith has. I’m sure once he gets a big score, more big scores (will come). The fact he’s getting those 60s, 70s, he’s looking really good with the bat,” he added.