{"id":836261,"date":"2025-03-23T14:13:25","date_gmt":"2025-03-23T19:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/23\/length-more-than-pace-key-to-australia-spinners-success-says-smith\/"},"modified":"2025-03-23T14:13:25","modified_gmt":"2025-03-23T19:13:25","slug":"length-more-than-pace-key-to-australia-spinners-success-says-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/23\/length-more-than-pace-key-to-australia-spinners-success-says-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Length more than pace key to Australia spinners&#8217; success, says Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-video=\"watch,640,360,43663030\" data-cerebro-id=\"679f6db3682728501dd09e71\" data-title=\"Steven Smith: 'A near-flawless performance'\" data-source=\"espn\"><figcaption>\n<div>\n<p><span>Steven Smith: &#8216;A near-flawless performance&#8217; (2:48)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Australia stand-in captain reflects on his side&#8217;s dominant win against Sri Lanka in the first Test (2:48)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Andrew Fidel Fernando<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span>Feb 1, 2025, 08:47 AM ET<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>It was the length Australian spinners bowled that helped them take 20 Sri Lanka wickets so easily. This is what the stand-in captain <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espncricinfo.com\/cricketers\/steven-smith-267192\">Steven Smith<\/a> felt after his team inflicted a record innings-and-242-run victory <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espncricinfo.com\/series\/australia-in-sri-lanka-2024-25-1459900\/sri-lanka-vs-australia-1st-test-1459906\/full-scorecard\">on Sri Lanka<\/a> in the first Test.<\/p>\n<p>The Sri Lanka batters struggled substantially against the spinners, losing 17 wickets to them in Galle. Left-arm spinner <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espncricinfo.com\/cricketers\/matthew-kuhnemann-774219\">Matthew Kuhnemann<\/a> took 9 for 149 in the match, to top the wicket-chart for the series so far.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I just think he bowls nice balls consistently,&#8221; Smith said of Kuhnemann. &#8220;Left-arm spinners to right-hand batters &#8211; it just works in the subcontinent.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He did a wonderful job when he bowled in India [where he took nine wickets across five innings in early 2023], and he bowled beautifully again in this game. It&#8217;s a pretty good effort.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Australia, unusually, played only one frontline seam bowler. Mitchell Starc has an outstanding record in Sri Lanka, but spin nevertheless claimed a bulk of the Sri Lanka wickets to fall in this Test, leaving just three for Starc.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I thought all the spinners worked really well together, and that&#8217;s the beauty of having three frontline spin bowlers,&#8221; Smith said. &#8220;You can sort of chop and change them, and as soon as one&#8217;s not looking quite as effective, and the batter gets a bit of a read on them or they get a little bit tired, you put the next one on and wait to see what&#8217;s happening.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><inline2><\/p>\n<p>But, while Australia&#8217;s spinners took 17 wickets in the Test, Sri Lanka&#8217;s spinners managed only the six.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For me, for [the] spinners it&#8217;s more length than pace,&#8221; Smith said. &#8220;If you can consistently hit a good length, then regardless of what&#8217;s going on, you&#8217;re going to be in play. If you can get the ball to skid or one to rag &#8211; the length where they&#8217;re lunging forward and can&#8217;t get back to it or they can&#8217;t drive at that length. If you&#8217;re hitting that consistently, your pace is kind of irrelevant, I think.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Australia scored 654 for 6 declared in the first innings. This is generally a position from which teams tend not to lose, and Australia felt especially confident, considering how quickly the pitch was deteriorating.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think they lost 7 for 17 [7 for 15] across the day today at one point. It was one of those where it was really tough to start on, and as soon as we got a breakthrough, we always felt we could get another one quickly.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><\/inline2><\/div>\n<p> Sharie Pecora <br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/rss\/articles\/CBMitgFBVV95cUxNa296cFdIelliWmRnM3N1LWhVcHJUTExENmlrX0VMSlB0aWU0UXFtY1ZyQ25sRWJpMlFNRnIxZzFnZUpTUGtxcXNPMjVtOENGT0Z1Ty1sbFJqbmxRNGF6aTVoYkVQSVlHN0hQb3hZV1dwTV9FdTJfMFJydUJHN3VxRl9fT3pCYm5LM0FsX1pFRDhkbE5nc1NiTTNpMEFNd3NzdVZiSW1LYnBiQTNYVWtmSzlMZXJTdw?oc=5\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steven Smith: &#8216;A near-flawless performance&#8217; (2:48) The Australia stand-in captain reflects on his side&#8217;s dominant win against Sri Lanka in the first Test (2:48) Andrew Fidel Fernando Feb 1, 2025, 08:47 AM ET It was the length Australian spinners bowled that helped them take 20 Sri Lanka wickets so easily. This is what the stand-in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":836262,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3065,43620],"tags":[7193,20003],"class_list":{"0":"post-836261","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"category-length","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-length"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}