‘I haven’t spoken to him’: Steve Smith’s dressing room outburst comes to light | Cricket

Australia were 62 runs ahead of India with nine wickets in hand at Stumps on Day 2 of the second Test against India. On a Delhi pitch that was supposed to get slower and lower, chasing anything more than 200 would have been a towering task even for the strong Indian batting unit. Even an ardent Indian fan, therefore, knew deep within, that Australia have their noses in front, all they needed to do was bat sensibly in the first hour and then build on the start. But what happened was the exact opposite. The Australian batters pressed the self-destruction button and were bowled in 90 minutes, giving India a 115-run target which they chased down with six wickets in hand to take an unbeatable 2-0 lead in the four-match series to retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

Overnight batter Travis Head was dismissed by a Ravichandran Ashwin beauty in the first over of the third day’s play but the real problem for Australia started when ace batter Steve Smith played an adventurous slog sweep shot to the India off-spinner and lost his wicket. Smith, known to be one of the better players of spin in the current Australian batting unit, played an uncharacteristic hoick across the line without even taking his front foot away from the line of the ball.

Despite Smith’s horribly unsuccessful attempt at sweeping out of trouble, the Australian batters didn’t learn. The likes of Matthew Renshaw, Alex Carey, Pat Cummins and even No. 11 Matthew Kuhnemann fell to the sweep shot.

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After Australia’s meek surrender in the second innings, batting coach Michael di Venuto revealed Smith’s outburst in the dressing room. Di Venuto also described Smith’s dismissal, which triggered the Australian collapse as “unusual”.

“I haven’t spoken to him yet about that, and where he’s at. But he’s excited about these conditions, he loves these conditions. It will be a frustrating thing for him at the moment that he hasn’t had the impact he would have liked.

The former batter said Smith let everyone in the dressing room know about his displeasure.

“He was certainly disappointed when he got out, and he made it known in the dressing room it was a poor shot. I think most people would have heard that, so they should have had a fair idea of what not to do,” the batting coach said.

Di Venuto admitted that the sweep shot carried a high percentage of risk for players who aren’t adept at playing it. He said most of the Australian batters erred in using the shot as a method of trying to get off strike rather than trusting their defence to survive.

“It was pretty obvious where we went wrong. With batting, it’s a pretty similar analogy – you’ve got to swim between the flags (play safe) in this country (India).

“If you go outside the flags in your game plan, you’re going to get in trouble.”

He also cited the skill with which opener Usman Khawaja swept his way to a series average of 150-plus in Pakistan last year and almost 50 on the subsequent Test campaign in Sri Lanka.

“Uz (Khawaja) played beautifully in the first innings (at Delhi), and has through Pakistan and the subcontinent. It (sweeping) is part of his game, but he also picks the balls to do it,” Di Venuto said.

“It’s smart, he’s not using it as a form of defence and I think that’s what happened towards the back end (of Australia’s second innings). People weren’t trusting their defence so started trying to sweep, which is the wrong way to go about it.”

Di Venuto said these things sometimes happened under pressure and when players pressed the panic button.

“When you’re under pressure and you panic, and you’re not trusting your defence, sometimes it is ‘I’ve just got to get up the other end’ and how do you do that? The sweep shot the other day seemed to be the way they were trying to do it, which is not the ideal way on a spinning wicket with variable bounce.

“It’s common sense, but that’s pressure.

“If you’re coming over here, and you’re not a sweeper but you’re trying to sweep, that’s not going to work and I think we had some good examples of that.”