Steve Smith had a bit of a day to forget at the SCG on Saturday, falling five runs short of joining the 10,000-run club before missing the chance to equal Ricky Ponting’s Australian record for most Test catches. And the reaction of wife Dani Willis said it all.

Willis was a bundle of nerves as Channel 7 cameras showed her in the crowd as Smith edged closer and closer to joining the exclusive club on day two in Sydney. He needed 38 runs in the first innings to become just the fourth Australian to reach 10,000 runs in Tests after Ponting (13,378), Allan Border (11,174) and Steve Waugh (10,927).

The former Test captain looked rather comfortable on a pitch playing plenty of tricks, but his innings came to an end on 33 when he edged Prasidh Krishna to Virat Kohli at slip. It left him on 9995 runs with the second innings still to come, but Willis looked gutted for her husband in the crowd. The high-profile WAG could be seen throwing her hands up in dismay when Smith was dismissed, and looked rather flat as he walked off the ground.

Steve Smith accused of ‘selfish’ act on cusp of Ponting record

But another milestone came into Smith’s grasp later in the day when he returned the favour to Kohli by taking the catch to dismiss the Indian veteran. That gave him 195 career catches in Tests – just one shy of Ponting’s record (196) for non-wicketkeeping Australian players.

And it looked like equalling Ponting’s record became too big of a carrot when he grassed a difficult chance just before stumps. Ravindra Jadeja edged one off Beau Webster straight to Usman Khawaja at first slip, but Smith dived across in front of his teammate and tried to take a one-handed screamer. Second-slip Smith put the chance down and immediately apologised to Khawaja, who didn’t look impressed by his teammate’s actions.

RELATED:

Mark Waugh said on Fox Cricket that Smith and Khawaja were standing too close together. “It was going slowly as well,” the great slip fielder said. “That’s just a regulation catch. To me, they’re too tight (in the slips). That’s a chance gone begging.”

Ponting, another one of Australia’s great slippers, said Smith was well within his rights to try and take the catch in front of Khawaja because you’re always taught to go for the ball rather than leave it for someone else – if you think you can catch it. “It would have carried easily enough (to Khawaja),” Ponting said. “He apologised but that is one rule of slips catching, if you see it and think you can get it, you go for it.” Despite Ponting’s defence of Smith, some pundits felt it was “selfish” and “poor” from the veteran.

Scott Boland stars again for Australia in fifth Test

The dropped catch put a dampener on what was a brilliant end to the day for Australia. A batting collapse saw the Aussies bowled out for just 181 and hand India a four-run first innings lead, but Scott Boland took four more scalps (eight for the match) to put the tourists on the brink.

India went to stumps at 6-141, holding just a 145-run lead with four wickets in hand. A win or draw in Sydney will hand the Border-Gavaskar Trophy to Australia for the first time in 10 years, while India need a win to draw the series 2-2 and retain it.