Steve Smith’s cricket career has featured 18 Test centuries and no shortage of highlights, but his performance in Pune topped them all according to a man who has closely watched the skipper’s rise and rise.

Coach Darren Lehmannn, who has seen Smith transform into one of the world’s greatest batsmen since the 2013 Ashes, could hardly have been more impressed with his captain in the first Test.

Smith strode to the crumbling pitch on Friday with Australia 1-10, holding a 165-run lead in the contest.

If the tourists collapsed, as they so often had during a nine-Test losing streak in Asia, then India would boast all the momentum and be chasing a more reachable target.

Instead Smith dug in and scored 109. It was more runs than the top-ranked Test team managed in either innings on the spinner’s paradise.

It meant Virat Kohli’s side had to attempt a world-record chase of 441. They folded meekly as Steve O’Keefe finished with match figures of 12-70.

Smith joined rare company.

Mark Taylor and Damien Martyn are the only other Australians to score a second-innings Test hundred in India, where dustbowls generally deteriorate to a point where facing spin bowling becomes guesswork late in a game.

“It’s probably his best, especially in those conditions,” Lehmann said of the captain’s knock.

“I haven’t seen him so determined.

“He’s always determined, he’s captain of our country and plays really well, obviously, but he knows conditions on that wicket (were tough so) to make a hundred was very special.”

The Aussie skipper celebrates his century against India. Photo: AP

Smith’s only other second-innings ton came in 2015 at the WACA against New Zealand, on a far more unthreatening deck.

Smith was dropped four times in Pune, where Jayant Yadav missed a chance to run the right-hander out on 60.

“You need a bit of luck on a wicket like that,” Smith said.

“I was pleased to score a second-innings hundred here in India, to formulate a different plan to how I normally play and problem solve on the spot.”

Smith has now reached three figures in five consecutive Tests against India, having dominated the 2014/15 series when he served as caretaker captain after Michael Clarke tweaked his hamstring in Adelaide.

Only four other players in Test history have achieved such an incredible run against one side: Don Bradman, Shoaib Mohammad, Neil Harvey and Jacques Kallis.

Gavaskar, Harbhajan react to Pune boilover

Meanwhile, Sunil Gavaskar, the man whose name jointly adorns the trophy that Australia and India are currently battling for, reacted with shock and scorn to the boilover in Pune.

Gavaskar, who played 125 Tests, noted it was one of India’s worst ever defeats and “nobody in their wildest dreams” would have expected what happened.

Disbelief was the common theme in Indian newspapers after the tourists claimed a shock 1-0 lead in the four-Test series.

Spinner Steve O’Keefe finished with the remarkable match figures of 12/70.

Harbhajan Singh, whose pre-series prediction was Australia would be thumped 4-0, quipped it “wasn’t a pitch” and he’d reserve judgment on O’Keefe until he bowled on a “good Test match wicket”.

“Test cricket should last five days. You cannot play on such wickets where anyone runs in to bowl and takes wickets,” he told The Indian Express.

“I know how hard I had to work to earn every single wicket.

“When you prepare such a wicket, you are making conditions favourable for the opposition … you don’t need to flight the ball or anything. You just need to bowl fast and not give the batsmen room.”

Gavaskar, writing in the Sunday Times, suggested India’s shambolic collapses highlighted an incentive system that was pushing players towards Twenty20 cricket instead of Tests.

-AAP