dermo
International Vice-Captain
yeah this is pretty spot on, he gets back in his crease when he's leaving and does it late, you won't see him doing big front foot leavesI'm increasingly coming around to the view that Smith's technical foibles are vastly overplayed. Some of that is covering up due to form but he's definitely found a really successful and surprisingly well-worn method for dealing with his major "weakness" which was the moving ball outside off stump.
It's pretty simple: he's very strong off his pads, so he exploits that by getting right across and covering the stumps and simply leaving the ball. Did it to great effect in England last year and at times look completely at ease when Anderson and Broad were hooping around to all parts, particularly at TB and The Oval. If he got beaten, he played so straight and compact that he didn't nick it, and half the time it hit him on the body anyway so it wouldn't have mattered.
So yeah, reckon we should rethink this "Steve Smith doesn't have a good technique" meme. And hell, even MS Dhoni found a way.
getting back and across and playing the ball late seems pretty technically sound to me