Just a couple of days before the start of the Ashes, Australia suffered a huge injury scare when their batting mainstay Steve Smith took a painful blow on his finger.
The highly-anticipated five-match series between England and Australia is scheduled to get underway on Friday (June 16) at Edgbaston. And the last thing Australia would have wanted before the first Test was an injury least of all to their former captain Steve Smith.
While the right-handed batsman is looking set to play the series-opener this week, he did give his team a huge scare while batting in the nets. The star batsman took a blow on his finger and looked in some pain before being treated for the same. Fortunately for Australia, the injury did not look serious and Steve Smith is looking good to be a part of the playing eleven for the series-opener in Birmingham.
Steve Smith ready for the Ashes:
Steve Smith has warmed up for the Ashes in style. The former Australia skipper smashed a sublime century against India last week during the ICC World Test Championship Final at the Oval. He scored 121 runs and helped Australia recover from 76 for 3 to post 469 and eventually win the game by 209 runs.
All eyes will be on him as the cricketing world is keen to see how he performs in England after his stunning outing in the country four years ago. In 2019 Ashes, he smashed century in each innings in the first Test at Birmingham and went on to score 774 runs at an average of 110.57 in the series.
“Think we’ve seen the last few months that they do some funky things and they are going to have to try some different things at certain times,” Smith recently said.
“One of my big strengths is being able to adapt on the go and understand what they are trying to do and sort of solve the problem out in the middle. I’ll just focus on my game and try and counter each thing they come at me with, but we are expecting some different stuff, that’s for sure.
“I won’t really change too much, it’s about understanding situations, knowing when I can press a bit more and put a bit more pressure on and knowing when I need to absorb pressure and rein it back in a bit. It’s something I’ve done for 10 years and I don’t see any need to change it,” he added.
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