Steven Smith feels Motivated after getting dismissed by Yasir Shah:
Australian star batsman, Steven Smith is looking forward to facing Pakistan‘s leg-spinner Yasir Shah again in the second Test at Adelaide, which starts on Friday, November 29. The top-ranked Test batsman was dismissed by Yasir Shah for just 4 runs from 10 deliveries in Australia’s solitary innings in the first Test at Gabba and celebrated the wicket by raising seven fingers, as he had claimed Smith’s wicket seven times in Tests.
Yasir Shah has represented Pakistan in 36 Test matches and claimed more than 200 wickets with an average of 29.16. He claimed 4 wickets in Pakistan vs. Australia first Test at Gabba after conceding 205 runs in 48.4 overs.
Steven Smith is the no. 1 ranked Test batsman. He has played 69 Test matches and is close to completing 7000 runs in Test with an average of 64.00, which is only second to the legendary batsman Sir Don Bradman’s average of 99.94.
Steven Smith talks about Yasir Shah:
Steven Smith said that he felt motivated at Yasir Shah’s celebration after he claimed his wicket for the seventh time in Tests. He also added that a couple of Australian dressing room members said that Yasir might have ‘woken up the beast’ due to his proud celebration. Smith said that they are in for a battle this upcoming week as he intends not to give away his wicket as quickly as he did in the first Test.
Yasir shah’s record of dismissing Smith seven times is only second to that of English bowler Stuart Broad who has done so eight times. Yasir Shah claimed Smith’s wicket thrice in his debut series against Australia in the UAE in 2014. The other four dismissals took place inside Australia, including the Gabba one. The 30-years-old said that some of the wickets were cheap ones and a product of the match’s situation, while he also admitted that some of those dismissals were conventional.
Smith expressed that he was not aware of the fact that Yasir had gotten him seven times. He explained that a few of those times, he was trying to set up the game for his team while accepting that he lost his wicket to Yasir a couple of conventional times as well. He also praised Yasir’s bowling at Gabba while also adding that he is not overly worried about him.
“A couple of I guess you’d call them cheap wickets in a way, but he’s got me a couple of conventional times as well. I thought he bowled really well at the Gabba last week. He got good drift and a little bit of spin when it was on offer. I’m not overly worried about him but playing with a bit more discipline this week and hopefully will score some runs.” Steven Smith said.
Smith said that the loss of his wicket in Australia’s only innings in the first Test against Pakistan was just because of him casually going in to bat because David Warner and Marnus Labuschagne had things under control and the scoreboard was in excellent shape. He said he would have been more careful if he were to walk in at 2 for 20. He accepted that the shot he played was a reckless one, but he intends to learn from that and move on.
The 30-year-old batsman said that he was not disappointed at losing his wicket because Australia was in a dominant position at that stage of the game. He said that they were in good shape, and losing his wicket then did not faze him that much, but he was sure that it made the bowler very happy.