“You know… he’s a freak”, Steve Smith praises Ben Stokes after incredible knock at Lord’s

Steve Smith was full of praise for Ben Stokes during the post match talk. After getting his player of the match medal, ex English cricketer and commentator Michael Atherton asked him about the performances by Ben Stokes.

Michael Atherton: As Ben Stokes was going on either side of lunch today, how many painful flashbacks were you getting?

Steve Smith: There’s a bit of deja vu there for sure. You know, he is an unbelievable player. Some of the things that he can pull off on this ground in this country, in the game of cricket, you know he’s a freak.

The way he went about it, he was just pretty much targeting that one side. He was smacking them from down the hill and then batting the other end.

That was probably the first shot he actually tried to hit from the the far end when he got out. Fortunately it went up the chimney. Obviously I dropped him, so I was feeling it for a while there. But again, he’s a freak, an believable player.

Michael Atherton: I was going to ask about that catch. You’ve got an extremely safe pair of hands normally in the field. Were you fearful that you might not get an opportunity given what has happened in the past with with Ben.

Steve Smith: Yeah, I mean, I didn’t pick it up initially. It’s quite difficult to square the wicket here. When he’s going hard and yeah, I found it eventually and then got it and yeah put it down. So it it’s it’s difficult giving guys like that lives.

You know the way he he plays and you know we’ve seen it in numerous times in in different formats of the game chasing totals the way he gets it done. So fortunately he hit one up the chimney, but you know again it was just an incredible knock.