Steve Smith is the best player I’ve ever played with, says Aaron Finch

New Delhi, Oct 28 (SocialNews.XYZ) Former Australia white-ball captain Aaron Finch has called Steve Smith the best player he has ever played with in his playing career, adding that his transformation from a leg-spin bowling all-rounder into one of the world’s finest batters has happened due to a rare mix of natural gift, hard work and an unshakeable belief in his own methods.

Smith started as a leg-spinner who batted at number eight and was seen as a potential successor to the legendary Shane Warne. But he has turned out to be Australia's best batter since Sir Donald Bradman, and even held the top spot in Test batters' rankings, apart from captaining the side in all formats.

“Steve Smith went from being touted as Shane Warne’s replacement, starting at eight in the batting order, bowling a few overs of leg spin, getting the odd runs as the finisher. Then something changed overnight. He turned into this absolute gun of a batter that took the world by storm.

“He was always a handsy player with big movements, moving his feet a lot. Then he simplified that and everything clicked. All the talk initially about him was a bowling all-rounder who’s ready to become the next big thing in Australian cricket, but then something clicked with his batting in Test cricket, and he worked it out.

“The ability to go from number six and five for so long and then slip into number four in the batting order was extraordinary. He’s the best player I’ve ever played with by a mile. He says, I’m doing it this way; I don’t care what it looks like to the outside world. This is what will make me most successful.

“That is a superpower. To see what he does when others can’t, you can’t explain why players like me or David Warner couldn’t do it, but he could. It’s a natural gift, but also hard work, the hours he’s put in. It’s extraordinary,” Finch said on Cricinfo’s ‘Cricketers on Cricketers’ show.

Smith’s career in international cricket was marred by the 2018 ball-tampering scandal in Cape Town, which led to him being banned from the game for 12 months. He also had to serve a two-year ban from taking any leadership role before becoming the vice-captain to current Test skipper Pat Cummins.

Finch, who led Australia to 2021 Men’s T20 World Cup triumph, felt being free of the captaincy helped Smith, though he admitted to initially finding it hard to lead the side when the premier right-handed batter was in the team without the leadership armband.

“After the 2018 incident, coming back into the international setup, Steve Smith was more relaxed as a player because he didn’t have the captaincy for obvious reasons. As captain, so much of your time goes into things away from your own game.

“And then getting the amount of work he wanted done put extra pressure on him mentally, because you need to get this much work done to feel ready to go, but you’ve still got to worry about everybody else.

“So finding that balance, not having that captaincy pressure post 2018, was probably a weight off his shoulders because he sits there and goes, now I can just worry about myself.

“I found it really difficult to captain with him in the side at the start, because I’d played under him for quite a bit of time and tactically, I thought he was an outstanding captain. So, I found myself at times being like, is this the right move? What would Smith think? And then one day he just said, why do you keep asking me? Just make your own decision,” he elaborated.

Finch also picked Smith’s batting in the knockout stages of the 2015 ODI World Cup, which Australia won on home soil, as one of his fondest memories of playing alongside him.

“One of my favourite memories of playing with Steve Smith is the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup of 2015, when he was turning into a beast of a batter, batting at number three. Everyone remembers the quarter-final between Australia and Pakistan for Wahab Riaz vs Shane Watson, but batting at the other end was Steve Smith.

“It was like he was batting with a stump. He was making Wahab look like medium pace. And then we go to the semi-final against India, and he gets a hundred off 89 balls, and he batted like a dream, and then he played an unbeaten knock of 56 in the final against New Zealand. He didn’t show even one bit of nervousness in those three games.

“Those three knockout stages are the most pressure games of a World Cup, and this guy was batting with absolute calmness. Not one thing enters his mind negatively about batting. I see it as a secret power, because it means that they don’t carry any baggage into the next innings,” he concluded.

Source: IANS