Captaincy Is Not on My Radar Now, Says Steve Smith

The first T20I against Sri Lanka on Sunday is going to be the first T20I in more than three years for Steve Smith. Not only for Smith, this game is going to be David Warner‘s first International match at home since the ban.

“It has been a while [since the last T20I]. My last game was the World Cup in 2016 against India, where Virat [Kohli] took the game away from us,” Smith said. “It’s going to be nice to walk out on Adelaide Oval on Sunday and play a T20 for Australia. I’m pretty relaxed, I’ve been hitting lots of balls and feel really good, so just excited to get started and look forward to hopefully a successful summer.”

Steve Smith has been going through a great form who scored more than 700 runs in the recently concluded Ashes series. Steve Smith has reckoned by Justin Langer and Tim Paine to be arguably the greatest batsmen in recent times.

“With the World Cup in about a year’s time there’s an opportunity to have that continuity and I think we’ve seen over the years that the T20 format’s the one where guys have rested a lot and that’ll probably change leading into a World Cup, I dare say,” Steve Smith said.

However, Smith clearly shared that he is not thinking about leading the team as of now. He thinks Aaron Finch and Tim Paine have been doing great job.

“Not on my radar at all. I’m pretty chilled, [Aaron] Finchy and Painey are both doing terrific jobs, so I’m enjoying playing and pretty chilled,” said while he was asked about the captaincy.

On the other hand, David Warner had a not-so-good Ashes series, despite having a good show in the ICC World Cup earlier this year.

“I think that’s one thing that we sort of forget about, what you have done and what you can do and what you’re capable of doing,” David Warner said. “You get caught up in everyone saying you’re out of form or you’re not doing as well away from home and whatnot. You’ve just got to try and… that external noises, just don’t let it get into your head. Negative thoughts are a very, very bad driver in anyone’s mind, so you’ve got to keep being positive and don’t buy into that.”

Warner was asked about whether he got enough time to recover from the bad phase where he replied that in a sarcastic way as he referred to the ball-tampering case.

“I had a long time off in the past year, which was great mentally,” he said, “and then coming back into it you forget how busy you actually are. But that’s all about trying to stay as fresh as you can mentally. Take your mind away from the game when you’re not playing, and try to find gaps in your schedule to actually get away from the game a little bit. For me it’s family, that’s one thing I really, really love.”

However, David Warner wouldn’t think much about his dismissal by Stuart Broad as he said he saidhe would do the things which he can do best.

“I won’t be reverse-sweeping the fast bowlers, but I’ll be going out there and doing what I do best and that’s try to put on a good start for the team and obviously put on a good show for the spectators,” shared the opener.