Steve Smith’s dressing room outburst during Delhi Test revealed: ‘I think most people would have heard that’

The second Test saw Australia come up with an improved performance before their epic collapse on Day 3. Starting off from their overnight score of 61 for one, the side was soon bundled out for 113. Ravindra Jadeja ripped through the Australian batter order who mostly tried to sweep and reverse-sweep despite watching their teammates falling on the same shot. The left-arm spinner returned career best figures of 42 for seven.

It was former Australia captain Steve Smith’s wicket on the final ball of the 19th over which triggered the collapse. Trying to sweep a Ravichandran Ashwin-delivery, the right-hander was trapped in front of the stumps.

Steve Smith dressing room outburst revealed

Australia batting coach Michael di Venuto has now brought in light the dressing room outburst of the star batter after the dismissal. He has revealed that he made it know to others in the dressing room that it wasn’t a good shot, adding that others should have taken a cue from it.

“I haven’t spoken to him yet about that, and where he’s at. But he’s excited about these conditions, he loves these conditions. It will be a frustrating thing for him at the moment that he hasn’t had the impact he would have liked.

“He was certainly disappointed when he got out, and he made it known in the dressing room it was a poor shot. I think most people would have heard that, so they should have had a fair idea of what not to do,” the batting coach said.

Di Venuto further asserted that Australians batters except for Usman Khawaja retorted to sweep shots because of lack of trust in their defensive techniques.

“It was pretty obvious where we went wrong. With batting, it’s a pretty similar analogy – you’ve got to swim between the flags (play safe) in this country (India).

“If you go outside the flags in your game plan, you’re going to get in trouble.”

“Uz (Khawaja) played beautifully in the first innings (at Delhi), and has through Pakistan and the subcontinent. It (sweeping) is part of his game, but he also picks the balls to do it,” Di Venuto said.

“It’s smart, he’s not using it as a form of defence and I think that’s what happened towards the back end (of Australia’s second innings). People weren’t trusting their defence so started trying to sweep, which is the wrong way to go about it.”

The former batter added that not playing sweep on the spinning and bouncing Delhi track was a thing of common sense, however, the visitors did not realise as they pressed the panic button in pressure.

“When you’re under pressure and you panic, and you’re not trusting your defence, sometimes it is ‘I’ve just got to get up the other end’ and how do you do that? The sweep shot the other day seemed to be the way they were trying to do it, which is not the ideal way on a spinning wicket with variable bounce.

“It’s common sense, but that’s pressure.

“If you’re coming over here, and you’re not a sweeper but you’re trying to sweep, that’s not going to work and I think we had some good examples of that,” Di Venuto concluded.