As it appears, this is a response to the critics who thought Steve Smith isn’t good enough for T20s, espically the sectors who didn’t trust on his experience and skills to play in T20 cricket.
Smith has been in great touch BBL 12. So far he has only played three matches but he has two centuries in his scorecard already. During the T20 World Cup, Australian team decided to go with Tim David as extra hitter but left out a consistent player in the top order. David Warner didn’t make much contribution as still he is struggle to score big runs for Sydney Thunder in BBL 12.
Against everyone’s criticism, Steve Smith has revolutionized his playing method by changing his stance. Now he pounces on everything short and easily dispatches them to over the boundary line. Most importantly, it looks like that he playing in perfection mode. Hardly he misses his shots and using his sixth sense, he finds gaps all over the ground.
His first hundred in BBL came against Adelaide Strikers. It was a sublime innings from the unstoppable Steve Smith. He was run out in 16th over and if he would have had opportunity to play 20 overs, the score would have more than 130 the way he was batting.
Steve Smith scored his second BBL hundred against Sydney Thunder at the SCG. It is his home ground so 125 off 66 balls at the SCG will be more special to him. David Warner bats for Sydney Thunder and there were lots of bid before this match on who’s the better T20 player and everything settles with the way Smith overshadowed his national side teammate.
The SCG pitch was by no means easy to bat, it was gripping and two paced. That makes his century even more special. On a pitch where other batter couldn’t touch the strike rate of 140, Smith came and bat so superbly as it was his normal day routine.
Sydney Thunder could only score 62 runs while Steve Smith alone scored 125 runs which tells the difference between the two teams or so to say, it was Sydney Thunder vs Steve Smith and as the scorecard tells, it was one-sided in Smith’s favor from beginning to the end.
Ex Australian captain Aaron Finch shared a beautiful message on Twitter after watching Steve Smith bat like an unstoppable force. He captioned:
Not a bad player this young Smith kid from Sydney, I think he’ll have a big future 😳😳 #BBL12
In eleven previous seasons of the Big Bash League, Sydney Sixers had no centurian in their team. Now, Steve Smith came and scored back to back centuries for the team.