Australia’s Steve Smith makes fools of his critics after stellar year

Australia’s captain has blossomed as a batsman and shot up the Test batting rankings – and is a lesson in how an unconventional technique should sometimes be left well alone

We have to thank the late Bob Monkhouse for one of the finest, funniest of all quips. “They laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian,” he reminisced. “Well they’re not laughing now.” And how we chuckled at young Steve Smith when, barely a year out of his teens, he came into the Australia side and appeared to suggest that his role was not so much to bat or bowl but primarily to act as court jester to lift spirits in a flagging team.

We all giggled even more at the sight of him crabbing his way across the crease to fling his bat wantonly and generally unsuccessfully outside off stump, and then, with the ball, send down flighted leg-break filth designed exclusively, it appeared, to trap Ian Bell in the most embarrassing way possible. He should have had a bladder on a stick and bells on his baggy green.

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source Sport | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1Cujosv