New Delhi: Australia’s premier batter Steve Smith admitted that he was a bit shocked when it was said to him that he would need to bat down the order to accommodating a possible return of left-handed opener Travis Head in the side’s next World Cup match against New Zealand at Dharamshala on Saturday.
At the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Wednesday, Smith scored 71 runs from 68 balls as a number three batter in Australia’s total of 399-8 against the Netherlands in a huge 309-run victory. But Smith may have to move down a spot to number four in Australia’s batting order if Head comes back to open the batting alongside David Warner and Mitchell Marsh moving to number three position.
“It’s a different sort of mindset I think, when you come in at three to four. So yeah, I got told if Trav was playing that I was going to be batting four. I’ll do whatever the team wants. I’ve got a pretty good record at three, so I was a bit shocked in a way, but I’ll do what I need to for the team,” Smith was quoted as saying bycricket.com.au.
Though he expressed surprise over the reshuffle of his batting position in the World Cup, Smith was pleased with his form growing in the competition as Australia now have three wins – coming against Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Netherlands – after beginning their campaign with two defeats to India and South Africa.
“You want to be trying to get everything together and be playing as consistently as possible towards the back-end (of the tournament). From a batter’s perspective, you can get (on) a run of scores in one-day cricket.”
“I’ve done that before in 2015 (World Cup, with five straight 50-plus scores), I did it for a bit in 2019 (World Cup, with three 50+ scores in four innings), and once you get that groove and in that sort of zone of playing, the way you want to play – I think Davey (Warner) is in that sort of patch at the moment – you can get some scores on the bounce, and obviously when your top order is scoring good runs, you’ve set yourself up nicely,” he added.
–IANS