Steven Smith has confirmed he will use the anti-glare strips under his eyes when batting during the day-night Test at the Gabba after some advice from Shivnarine Chanderpaul ensured he was wearing them the correct way up.
Smith trained with them under lights in the lead-up to the second Test against England and said he definitely felt a positive impact. However, initially he had not quite used them the way they were designed.
“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 wore in training are commonplace in several American sports, and are designed to reduce the glare from floodlights by absorbing the light that would otherwise reflect off the skin.
Smith is known to not be a fan of 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.”
During the previous day-night Test at the Gabba, when West Indies famously won by eight runs in early 2024, Mitchell Starc commented about how the harder surface at the venue meant the pink ball went softer than it does in Adelaide where extra grass can act as a cushion.
“I think Adelaide, the wicket they have down there, it’s quite furry, and the ball can kind of stay harder for longer,” Smith said.
“Here it’s obviously renowned to be quite a hard, fast wicket, and it’s difficult to change your characteristics of the wicket. So at times [the ball] can get a little bit soft, and you can see guys batting comfortably at stages. So that’s one thing we have to weigh up going into this game, and see how it plays out.” (ESPNcricinfo)
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