South African captain AB de Villiers heaps praise on Steven Smith, calls him a "captain's nightmare"

Steven Smith

Steven Smith played an unbeaten knock of 73 from 55 balls against South Africa in the 3^rd ODI at Manuka Oval, Canberra, yesterday which was nothing short of world class, probably indicating that he has finally started living up to his potential.

The 25-year old all-rounder, despite all his class, hasn’t really set the stage on fire and is not one of Australia’s first choice batsmen in the playing XI as of now. Only Michael Clarke’s absence due to a hamstring injury enabled him to break into the playing XI in the ongoing ODI series.

However, the unbeaten knock that made all the difference in the important game could do a world of good to his World Cup chances. The quick fire knock boosted Australia’s total, enabling them to post 329/5 against South Africa from their 50 overs. The right-hander was at his sensational best as he even played a innovative flick between his legs. South Africa managed only 256 in their reply, losing by 73 runs in the end.

Showering praise on the talented player, opposition skipper AB de Villiers called him as a “captain’s nightmare”.

"I think his strength is that he's got a lot of energy at the wicket. He's almost a captain's nightmare when he comes to the crease after 25-30 overs, especially on this kind of ground where you know you're not going to get three and four wickets in patches,” said de Villiers.

"You're going to have to work hard for your wickets, and if you get a busy cricketer at the wicket it makes it very difficult for you to control the innings, to keep your rhythm and just to pace it a little bit better. He makes it really difficult for us in doing that," the Protean added.

Smith is similar to de Villiers: Finch

Speaking on Smith after his Man-of-the-Match performance, Aaron Finch, whose century set up the base for the youngster to go all guns blazing, said: "Smithy played one of the great innings I thought, the way he came in from ball one and struck it into the gaps and ran hard and never allowed the bowlers to settle. He was moving around the crease and played a couple through his legs, I don't know how he does that.

"He was super and that's really shown the class of the player. We've seen that in Test cricket for a while and in one-day cricket it's starting to get better and better and more consistent. The beauty of Steve is he's a great player of spin, so teams are reluctant to bowl that at the start of his innings because that does allow him to get away.

"At the same time he bats in the middle order in Test cricket and can play pace. So he's a hard guy to tie down - I think he's a very similar type player to AB de Villiers, you really struggle to bowl dot balls to them in a row, and through the middle of the innings if you've got somebody who's constantly getting off strike or hitting boundaries it's such a hard thing to defend against,” he added.