Australia’s stand-in Test captain Steve Smith has expressed his dissatisfaction on the comments made by legendary Australian cricketer Matthew Hayden on Peter Handscomb in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2023.
“He was very, very defensive with his mindset. His strike rate of under 20 means that you are not going anywhere, and the scoreboard is not going anywhere, and that’s a product of some really tough batting conditions … he was sort of like a sitting duck in many ways. It’s almost un-Australian. I don’t want anyone out there to think that I’m overly criticising Pete, I’m not. It’s just not quite attacking enough. It’s such a tricky balance,” the 51-year-old had said.
He’s been outstanding – Steve Smith comes in defence of Peter Handscomb
“I think he’s been outstanding,” the 33-year-old had said while addressing reporters in a press conference.
“The first two Test matches in the first innings of both and left pretty much stranded. If one of the other top seven were able to get in a partnership with him, things could certainly be different. He batted beautifully in the first two, he’s stuck to his method, he’s trusted his defence, and then scored off balls that were either overpitched or too short and played them off the back foot,” he said.
“His method has proved it’s worked in difficult conditions. So I was shocked to see some comments about the way he was playing because I think him and Uzzy (Khawaja) have probably been arguably our two best batters in this series,” he added.
