Steve Smith doubles down on wearing anti-glares in Brisbane as he commits to anti-glare tape in day-night Test.
After receiving guidance from Shivnarine Chanderpaul to make sure he was wearing the anti-glare strips correctly, Steve Smith has confirmed he will wear them beneath his eyes when batting during the day-night Test at the Gabba.
In the run-up to the second Test match against England, Smith trained with them under the lights and claimed to have felt a good influence. However, originally he had not quite used them the way they were planned.
“I actually messaged Shivnarine Chanderpaul and asked him what his thoughts were, whether he wore the chalk or the strips,” Smith said. “He said the strips, and he thinks it blocks out 65% of the glare. And he also said, ‘I’ve seen photos and you’re wearing them the wrong way’. So yesterday I put them on the right way.
“I agree with him. I think it certainly stops the glare. Yeah, I’ll be wearing them.”
The ‘eye blacks’ – small, black, adhesive strips worn on the cheekbone – that Smith used in training are typical in various American sports, and are designed to lessen the glare from floodlights by absorbing the light that would otherwise bounce off the skin.
It is well known that Smith dislikes batting against the pink ball. In day-night Tests he averages 37.04 with one century compared to 58.31 in day matches with 35 hundreds.
“It’s hard to bat all the time,” he said of any difference between twilight and complete darkness. “It’s a tricky one. The ball reacts obviously differently to a red one. It can change quickly. It can start moving randomly.
“You’ve got to try and play what’s in front of you at that time and when it does shift on you and the ball starts doing something different, you’ve got to try and come up with plans to counter that, whether it be more aggressive, whether it be going to your shell and trying to get through that period. Everyone’s different. It’s trying to be one step ahead when it does start to shift.”