From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Kristin Amiot. It's Friday, January thirty one. Commissioner Karen Webb has defended a decision by New South Wales Police to withhold information about its discovery of a caravan packed with explosives for more than a week.
This has a COVID investigation, an investigation that requires us to go about our business without popromising investigation. There is a time and a place that we need to inform the community where there is a vista public safety. We believe we've mitigated the public reason, but we need to get on with the investigation and that's why that recurred.
The vehicle was abandoned on the side of a road in Durall, in Sydney's northwest, containing enough explosives to create a sizeable explosion. A note containing the addresses of a synagogue and members of the city's Jewish community he was also discovered. It hasn't been designated a terrorist incident, but two people arrested on unrelated charges were in police custody this week after posting on social media that they were
looking for a caravan. Jewish leaders say they understand the need for clandestine investigations, but urged police to be more transparent about community safety. In the wake of a spate of anti Semitic attacks, a home next door to a Jewish primary school in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs was vandalized with anti Semitic graffiti on Wednesday night, an act condemned by Prime Minister Anthony Albanizi on Thursday. This situation is moving quickly. You can read the latest at the Australian dot com
dot au. Steve Smith needed just one run to reach a coveted test cricket milestone when he stepped onto the pitch at Gaul International Stadium in Sri Lanka. But not content to leave it at that, the skipper put on one hundred and forty one runs over two days, bringing his career test total to just over ten thousand. The question now is when we'll see this incredible feat again and if it's likely to become a rarity. That's today's episode.
Nine ninety nine test runs? Can you get the last one? Worse than being on ninety nine?
For Border?
It was historic standing ovation for Alan Border, the second in history to achieve ten thousand runs ten grand reasons why is one of.
The greats for war. It was a long time coming. That was a eficit innex under pressure. You'll see none.
Better for ponting.
It was a relief. What's the best de riggy Ponting?
And when Steve Smith brought up ten thousand test cricket runs in the first test of the Warnler Litteran Trophy, it was deliverance.
There it is first Paul Smith, a landmark moment.
Steve Smith's to ten thousand test drums.
It's a pretty significant moment in any batter's career.
David Tanner is the Australian's Night Editor.
There have only been four Australians now who've got to the mark, and only fifteen batters of across crickets one hundred and forty five year history, so it's a big number to reach.
The skipper had been left hanging one agonizing run short of the milestone after he was bowled by preceded Krishna at the SCG in the final test of the Border Gavaskar Trophy. Do you think that Steve Smith will feel differently about this because it's happened off home soil, and in particular because he was quote unquote robbed of it at the SCG or do you think he's just happy to get there.
I'm sure he would have loved to have got the runs on his home, but you would have to think any better that gets to ten thousand runs is going to remember wherever it happened in the world, the moment that it happened, and knowing Steve Smith is probably going to also look at it as whether his innings helped his team in the Test match. Being quite the team player.
Steve Smith's effort in Sri Lanka makes him the equal second fastest to record ten thousand Test cricket runs. He did it in one hundred and fifteen Tests, for more than West Indian Brian Lara. Of course, it's a feat that might not have materialized at all thanks to a Test cricket band placed on Smith following the sandpaper Gate cheating scandal in twenty eighteen, Australia's cricket captain Steve Smith being escorted out of South Africa with his career in tatters.
Smith and his former vice captain David Warner were banned from international and domestic cricket for twelve months following the incident where Cameron Bancroft was caught roughing up one side of the ball with sandpaper.
It'd be interesting to know how many runs he might have had had that not happened.
Smith and Warner were also slapped with additional leadership bands, and many speculated Smith would never captain the Australian Test side again, even after the official sanctions ran out. But as current Test captain Pat Cummins sits this one out due to the imminent arrival of his second child, Smith is back in the skipper's seat, meaning he's not only the fourth Australian to make ten thousand Test runs, but the fourth Australian captain.
He's been the player of his generation.
At a moment here that reinforces what a special career this has been.
David Tanner delved into the cricket archives to understand how Steve Smith's rode to ten thousand Test runs compares to that of his predecessors.
Certainly, the Border and Law ones are very admirable, partly because both of them happened on home soil. They both got them in an SCG Test in Sydney. When Border got to ten thousand runs, he was only the second of any play out in cricket's history to reach the mark. Sunil gavascar the Indian opener was the first one. So border was joining a very select club back then.
Here's one hundred and twenty two behind Sril Gaviscar and let you say he won't reach them in this city Test much the prolonged deviation from the crowd and well deserved.
Steve Wars was a very emotional one because he had a really rough year. He'd had a lot of substandard innings for a long time and if I remember correctly, they were even some people questioning whether he should keep his place in the team despite his stellar career.
When you have a thirty five thirty six, when you start the file or not do so well, people straight away say well you too old, your past your best, you should retire. And the fact that I was a captain, I was fronting every press conference, it was something I couldn't avoid was that inevitable question are you retiring as your formerly good you know, are you going to be dropped? So there's a lot of negativity going into the Test.
Match and he came to his home Test in Sydney against England and desperately needed a good innings. Australia batted on the opening day and war scored a century on the first day. He reached his century with the last ball of the day, which was what everybody remembers, but it was a shot that got him to think it was sixty nine runs earlier in his innings that was the one that got him to the ten thousand mark.
But in a way, that innings has remembered more for him finally breaking a long run of bad innings with a century.
But it's Ricky Ponting's effort that bears the most resemblance to Smith's.
He did his in the West Indies, a bit like Steve Smith getting his in Sri Lanka. It was a very small crowd in Antigua. There were only about two thousand people at the ground to witnessed this historic moment. But one of them was viv Richards, the great West Indian batsman, who they were playing at a ground that was named after Cyvivian Richards. Richards never got to the ten thousand mark himself, but at least there was someone noteworthy there coming up.
We ask if a cricket onslaught could make milestones like this one less likely. There are few circumstances nowadays when cricket fans are bereft of matches to watch. The Australian men's Test side will play around a dozen Tests this year, while the world champion women are in the middle of a dominant multi format ashes campaign against England. Seventy four to twenty matches will be played in the Indian Premier League from March, and then the local Big Bash competitions
kick off at the tail end of the year. They are World championship titles to be defended too, and in a few short years cricket will return to the Olympics following a hiatus of more than a century. But as players diversify their portfolios, and as India's Viat Collie creeps towards it, you have to wonder what becomes of that
ten thousand Test run milestone. And just lastly, David, On the one hand, you've got players like Sam Constace who are starting younger and building up an incredible number of runs very early in the piece. But on the other hand, the cricket calendar is so stacked now and the focus on Test cricket maybe isn't what it once was. So is there a possibility that ten thousand Test runs could become a rarity?
I think it works both ways. There certainly is a more packed cricket calendar than there used to be, But if look at the list of the fifteen people who got ten thousand, I mean Samuel Gavisca was the first to do it. I think it was in the nineteen nineties, so it was one hundred years of cricket before anyone got there, which spoke to how much more cricketers were
already playing, say thirty years ago. Yes, you now have t twenty and one day Internationals vying for time, but there still seems to be a significant amount of Test cricket being played, so I wouldn't think it's going to be a rarity. But certainly with more different types of cricket being played, there might be fewer batters getting to the mark than there would have been before TEA twenty and loll.
David Tanner is the Australian's Night Editor. The first Test in the Warnmuerletteran Trophy continues on Friday. You can follow all the action from Gaul at the Australian dot com dot au