Australia batsman Steve Smith sustained a recurring elbow injury and has not played many matches post the first-leg of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021. The middle-order batsman is now recovering and the selectors face a tricky balancing act of managing his workload in the ICC T20 World Cup and the Ashes.
Smith's elbow injury has been a problem for years but it has aggravated lately. He looked in pain while batting for Delhi Capitals and failed to score big on a consistent basis.
Smith has been named in Australia's T20 World Cup squad that was announced on Thursday (August 19), after missing the tours of West Indies and Bangladesh.
Australia chief selector George Bailey said he is “really confident” that Smith would play a big part in both World Cup and the Ashes but revealed that the latter is still a long way from being fit for Test matches.
"He’s building up nicely. The latest update I had from him is he’s facing up over 100 balls in a session pretty comfortably," George Bailey told reporters in a video call.
"That’s about a quarter of what he’d like to be facing for a test match so he’s got a little bit of building up to go there,” he said.
Bailey further said that the senior batsman will play through pain if the risk-reward ratio is favourable.
“There would obviously be a number where the risk would outweigh the benefit. We’ve got to place a little bit of trust in Steve as someone who knows his body and knows exactly what he needs to be able to perform at a level that’s required,” he concluded.
Australia will face South Africa on 23 October to kickstart their T20 World Cup campaign. They will later face Afghanistan in a one-off Test starting from 27 November before the start of the Ashes.
(Inputs from Reuters)
