Steve Smith is currently the number one batsman in the latest ICC Test rankings for batsmen. He is one of the best batsmen in modern cricket in all formats. But his evolution as a significant batter was not smooth. He selected as a specialist bowler for Australia. However, later he turned his focus towards batting. In a chat hosted by, Rajasthan Royals, Steve Smith himself spoke with Kiwis spinner Ish Sodhi about it.
The 30-year-old made his international debut back in 2010. Not surprisingly, he was named a specialist spinner on behalf of Shane Warne. But, he failed to impress the selectors with his performance with the ball and eventually eliminated from the national team. Meanwhile, Nathan Lyon has arrived, and he has become the team’s leading spinner.
Steve Smith revealed surprises while chatting with Ish Sodhi
In a chat, Steve Smith said he was one of the 12 or 13 bowlers the selectors tried after Shane Warne bid farewell to international cricket. He was one of those bowlers but dropped from the team due to his poor performance.
Smith later realized that he had come to Australia because of his batting talent. So he turned his focus towards batting, and now he is the leading batsmen for his country in Test and ODI. “They were looking for a spinner after the Shane Warne era and tried a lot of options at that time.”
“Now we’ve got Nathan Lyon. He’s doing fantastic, but I was one of the 12 or 13 spinners they tried. I dropped out after that, and for me, I thought I could get back into the team through my batting. So at that point, I let my bowling to slip a little bit.” previously, I was mixing and matching between batting and bowling and working on both in a session in the nets.”
“Then it got to a point where, if a session is of three hours in the nets, I’d be doing probably two and half hours of batting,” Steve Smith.
