THE list of contenders challenging for Marcus North’s Test position for the upcoming tour of New Zealand continues to grow with exciting New South Wales all-rounder Steven Smith the latest to put his hand up.
The 20-year-old leg-spinning all-rounder – who recently made his Australian debut in the Twenty20 international against Pakistan at the MCG – scored his second first-class century during the recently-completed Shield match against Victoria to again underline his prodigious talent.
While it is his bowling that has mostly caught the eye of national selectors to date, Smith’s batting has improved significantly in recent times and he has now scored two centuries in his past six innings.
With North under increasing pressure to retain his place in Australia’s Test batting line-up for the two-Test tour of New Zealand in late March – following his lean summer against the West Indies and Pakistan – Smith is emerging as one of the leading candidates to take his place along with state team-mate Phillip Hughes, Victorian pair Cameron White and Andrew McDonald and in-form Tasmanian George Bailey.
However, Smith says at this stage of his career he is only focused on continuing to improve his batting and bowling as he realises that time is certainly on his side when it comes to Test selection.
“I’m not really thinking about that sort of thing at the moment,” he said of the upcoming tour of New Zealand.
“I’ll just play my cricket for New South Wales and if those (national) opportunities come up then it’s pretty good.”
Smith says he is delighted with the improvement in his batting as he showed against Victoria that he is more than capable of batting in the top six at Shield level.
“It’s coming along pretty well,” he said of his batting.
“I had a good off-season up at the academy and I learned a lot about myself as a player up there.”
So much so that there are many who believe Smith’s batting could well end up exceeding his bowling, even though it was his leg spin that first caught the eye of national selectors as Australia continues its search for the next Shane Warne.
“They’re both coming along pretty well,” Smith said when asked whether he was now a batting or bowling all-rounder.
“The ball is coming out good but it would be just good to take a few more wickets.”
“I guess it’s just a bit of luck that needs to go my way and if I get a few wickets under my belt I’ll gain a lot of confidence from that.” (CA).