"I will be fine" - Steve Smith dispels fitness concerns ahead of first Test against Sri Lanka
Australia's star batter Steve Smith remains confident of overcoming his quad injury and will play the first Test against Sri Lanka at Galle, starting on Wednesday.
The 33-year-old admitted that playing ODI cricket with the injury would have been a concern, but not in red-ball games.
Smith, who missed the last three ODIs against Sri Lanka, suffered a quad strain while batting in the second. The right-handed batter scored a match-winning half-century in the first ODI, followed by 28 runs in the second.
However, Australia wanted to save him for the Test matches, especially with their long list of injuries.
Steve Smith becomes the latest Australian in doubt for tonight's third ODI against Sri Lanka #SLvAUS
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Australia's vice-captain in Tests declared that he would be fine playing Test cricket since there won't be a great deal of running in such conditions. The New South Wales batter told AAP:
"If we were still playing one-day cricket, I would be touch and go, but Test cricket, I will be fine. I field in the slips, won't be doing a great deal of running around in the field. And then in these conditions, there's not a lot of hard running. They usually have a few sweepers, and it's four or one quite often. So there's not a heap of hard running."
Steve Smith, Australia's captain during their 2016 tour of Sri Lanka, was the tourists' highest run-getter in the three-Test series. The veteran managed 247 runs in the series at an average of 41.16 with a fifty and a hundred each.
However, Australia's batting was a collective failure as they slumped to a 3-0 loss. With the visitors already struggling in the ODIs against spin, they will have their task cut out in red-ball cricket.
Steve Smith recently became the fastest Test batter to reach 8000 runs
A new world record for Steve Smith!
The fastest player ever to 8,000 Test runs #PAKvAUS https://t.co/xmC7iSM7uN
Meanwhile, during Australia's tour of Pakistan in March 2022, Steve Smith became the quickest batter to score 8000 runs in Test cricket. He did so in the third Test in Lahore and achieved it in 151 innings.
But the former Aussie skipper could not convert any of his three fifties into a hundred. Australia will need a truckload of runs off his bat to counter Sri Lanka's spin threat.