Australia’s stand-in skipper, Steve Smith has come to the defense of his teammate, Peter Handscomb.
After winning the third Test at Indore by 9 wickets, the Australian batters received some harsh criticisms from commentators.
One of these was Matthew Hayden, who said that there was no intent in the Australian batters to score runs against India.
Additionally, Hayden was pretty unimpressed with Handscomb’s knock of 19 from 98 deliveries and lashed out heavily at him.
In this process, Australia lost 6 wickets in a matter of just 11 runs.
On the other hand, Smith was praised for exposing the technical loopholes and catching India off guard.
Says Hayden,
(Handscomb’s) strike rate of under 20 means you are not going anywhere, and the scoreboard is not going anywhere.
Adding further, Hayden said,
It’s almost un-Australian. It’s just not attacking enough.
Meanwhile, Smith was quite ‘shocked’ by these comments and immediately clarified that Handscomb has been a great player.
I think he’s been outstanding in the first two Tests. A 70-odd, in the first innings, in both and left pretty much stranded. If one of the other top seven, I suppose, were able to get into a partnership with him, things could certainly be different.
Smith defends Handscomb after reading negative comments about him
On the other hand, Smith also talked about Handscomb’s solid methodology while batting which has helped him get runs even in difficult situations.
I was pretty disappointed to see some of the comments last Test match around him not playing in the Australian way. He batted the same in the first innings, and throughout the whole series. 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 backfoot.
Concluding, Smith 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 he and Uzzy (Khawaja) have probably been arguably our two best batters in this series.
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