Smith nonplussed about absences as he backs his side to turn things around if the result does not go their way.
Smith: If the result doesn’t go our way, we can turn it around.
Australia will start the Ashes without Cummins and Hazlewood and have two debutants in the XI but Smith nonplussed about the situation.
As Australia’s captain on the eve of a home Ashes series, Steven Smith exuded composure while sitting in front of a sizable media crowd.
He has been there and done this numerous times. However, this is a bit different. It was hardly Australia’s best option that Smith was sitting there as a stand-in captain.
For the first time since 2022, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, two of their three fast bowlers, will not be playing in a home Test.
It was not even a backup plan that they selected two players, Jake Weatherald and Brendan Doggett, to make their Test debuts for the first time since 2019 and a seventh opening partner for Usman Khawaja in 16 Tests.
“I think you want to try and win the first Test match and get yourself ahead of the game, I suppose, or the series,” Smith said on Thursday. “But I think either way we look at last summer, we lost the first Test match and we were able to claw the series back.
“We’ve got a lot of belief in that change room, if the result doesn’t go our way this week, that we can turn it around. We saw it last year. So ideally, we play well this week, and we’ve got potentially Patty on the table next game. Josh, I don’t know, but I think we’ll see how this week pans out.”
Twelve months ago, Australia learnt some very important things. They knew they had been undercooked heading into that series, even though they publicly protested after losing badly to India in Perth, which sparked a barrage of abuse from home supporters.
Unlike last year, every member of the squad—aside from Khawaja—participated in the most recent Sheffield Shield campaign to be ready for the first Test. Except for Mitchell Starc and Travis Head, every member of the selected XI has participated in at least two first-class games in the past month, something that was not the case last summer.
“It’s pretty standard,” Smith said. “I’ve been involved in a few now, and there’s always so many words said before the series. But for us, I think it’s about just ignoring the outside noise, concentrating on our processes, what we do well as a team and trusting and backing that throughout. It’s exciting that we’re starting tomorrow. Everyone’s been raring to go for the last few days of training and even before that.”