England have brought in left-arm spinner Jack Leach for the second Ashes 2019 Test with a daunting task to unsettle the inform batting superstar Steve Smith at Lord’s after the right-hander led Australia to a massive victory in the series opening Test in Birmingham.
Smith hogged all the limelight with his incredible batting display in the first Ashes Test, cracking two centuries to make his presence felt in his comeback match in red-ball cricket after the ball-tampering saga.
Following their horrible show in Birmingham, England are desperately searching for a solution to get rid of the right-hander early at Lord’s and Leach could be the man, given the weakness of the Australian batsman against left-arm spin.
Noteworthy, Smith averages heavily against various bowling – off-break (94.07), right-arm pace (67.05), left-arm pace (65.28), leg-break (48.77), but his average drops against left-arm orthodox (34.90).
However, Australia has already prepared for the same, as they have called up Ahmed Raza, the Sharjah-born UAE cricket team left-arm spinner, who was in the UK at the time for holiday, to provide the team spin bowling practice for three days before the Lord’s Test.
Though, Ahmed, who already trained with the Aussies in UAE last winter, has given the relevance of his specific area of expertise to the Australian batsmen, especially Smith, but has a word of caution for him.
Raza told media, “Steve Smith is such a great player, I’ve hardly seen a ball go past him when he’s been batting in the nets. The pitches that are prepared here are slow and do turn, so maybe once in the whole day you might get the better of him. He is the toughest bloke to bowl at because he has such quick hands and he picks the length very early.”
Meanwhile, the UAE spinner feels grateful to get the opportunity to pick the brain of the Australian players. He added, “Even when we trained with the Aussies in Dubai, I couldn’t tell who was supposed to be helping whom, because I was getting so much out of it.”
The 30-year-old bowler continued, “Getting to work with Nathan Lyon again is great, too. He loves bowling and he loves talking cricket. He was telling me what lines to bowl at certain batters, and tiny little things like that really register in your brain. When you are representing your country, these things come back to you, and you try to do better.”
He was also thrilled to get a different level of experience at the Home of Cricket -Lord’s. Raza signed off by saying, “Being in the Lord’s dressing room is liked a dream come true. Walking across the ground to the Nursery, its a dream for any cricketer to be there. I’ve been lucky everything has panned out so well for me.”
(With The National Sport Inputs)
