Smith feels his dismissal was a turning point but believes the Australian batsman will be able to adapt to the situation in the upcoming matches.
Deivarayan Muthu
Stephen Smith suggested his dismissal, which triggered the collapse, cost Australia the chance to post a competitive total in their World Cup opener against India with Sunday’s sharp turn at Chepauk. .
Smith top-scored for Australia with 46 off 71 balls before Ravindra Jadeja hit a mid-length shot to the top of the stumps. Australia improved from 110 for two in 27 overs to 199 all out in 49.3 overs.
“Yeah, maybe [my dismissal was the turning point]” said Smith after Australia lost by six wickets.We were trying to go a little deeper with it, but it was obviously very difficult. [on this pitch]. And it’s going to be difficult for the guys coming in… We were trying to go a little deeper and unfortunately I felt like we got a pretty good ball from Jadeja. It felt like I was back in Test cricket. But if we lost these wickets in a row, we probably should have gotten closer to 250. ”
Until Jadeja brought him down, Smith felt he had good rhythm with the bat. After Mitchell Marsh was dismissed for a duck, Smith came into bat in the third over and steadily piled up the score, scoring 69 runs for the second wicket with David Warner in the bitter Chennai heat. Ta.
“I thought we played really well,” Smith said. “I don’t think it was a wicket where we just went out and worked hard and had a high strike rate. We had to overcome that scenario and it was challenging. I felt like we were moving towards the ball well. He took some great drives from his fast bowlers and had some good spin as well. [I] It felt good, but unfortunately I couldn’t make a larger size. ”
“I definitely think we can learn a little bit from this game. We’ve talked about it as a group.” [about] Maybe we should have played on the surface and built a good partnership at that stage. I think if we could have extended it a bit more and had one more partnership, we could have recorded a defensible total on that wicket, all things remaining the same. ”stephen smith
Smith hit five boundaries, all against the pace, and trusted Chepauk’s spin-friendly defense against Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav and R Ashwin. Hitting a ball with length against the turn was risky, and loose balls never reached him. The Indian spin trio’s combined record was 30 wins, 3 losses, and 104.6 seconds.
“From my perspective, it’s just that [about] “I tried to hit guys as deep as possible, get down to the other side, rotate strikes, wait for loose balls and then try to put them away,” Smith said. It was very difficult because we got a lot of loose balls. So I was trying to rotate my strikes as much as possible around those in-between periods, and that’s essentially it. ”
Australia will play their next eight group matches at seven different venues, starting with back-to-back games against South Africa and Sri Lanka in Lucknow. Although they struggled to adapt to the conditions at Chepauk, coach Smith expects Australia to perform better on other pitches and peak at the appropriate time in the competition.
“I definitely think we can learn a little bit from this game,” Smith said. “We talked as a group [about] Maybe we should have played on the surface and built a good partnership at that stage. I think if we could have extended it a bit more and had one more partnership, we could have posted a defensible total on that wicket, all things remaining the same.
“And I might go to the next place. [where] It could be a flat surface, or you could score 350 points and play depending on the surface conditions. I think that’s the most important thing when playing in these conditions. In tournament play, you don’t want to peak too early. Obviously we have to work hard enough to get to the final, but ultimately we want to play our best cricket. So we hope we can turn things around in the next few days and get a win against South Africa.”
Deivarayan Muthu is an associate editor at ESPNcricinfo
