Jamie Smith experienced terrible disappointment last year after he found out that there were no buyers for him in the Indian Premier League (IPL). His base price was ₹2 crore, which in many ways is an indication that the player strongly expects himself to find a team. The less the base price is, the more uncertain the player is. No rocket science there!
Anyway, the Ashes was underway when the mini-auction happened, and the England wicketkeeper batsman was having a horrible time in the time-honoured series, particularly with the bat. That may have influenced the IPL franchises not to go for him.
Disappointed, Smith decided to revive his career. At present, he is playing county cricket for Surrey and on Friday, he scored a fantastic 166 against Leicestershire at the Kia Oval as his team finished the first day on 412/6. Isn’t he on the right path?
“At the time, I would have definitely liked to have gone [to the IPL]. It’s an ambition of mine to strengthen all sides of my game, and I see the IPL as something that can really enhance the white-ball side and does have benefits again to the red-ball [game].
“But in hindsight, yeah, it’s fantastic to come here and have a block of red-ball [cricket] behind me. I felt that towards the back end of the summer and into the winter, technically, I felt a little bit out of kilter,” the Surrey star said last month.
“It’s been nice to come here [The Oval] and work on a couple of things, and then I’ll be able to hopefully implement them, for six or seven [County Championship] games, and we’ll see where we get to if there’s any England stuff after that. But, yeah, it’s nice to have a little block to try and get things right,” he added.
Terrible last few months for Smith!
After the home Test series against India last year, things have not gone Smith’s way at all. Against Shubman Gill‘s team, he scored 434 runs at an impressive average 62. At the Ashes later in the year, he totally came a cropper. Across five Tests, he got just one fifty, and also dropped Australia’s most dangerous batsman, Travis Head, once.
He wasn’t part of England’s T20 squads for Sri Lanka and the T20 World Cup earlier this year. Not as an excuse, but Smith said too much cricket, particularly the five-game series, was one of the reasons he fared less than expected behind the wicket.
“Mistakes are going to happen. The India series was physically and mentally very tough. It was my first five-Test series. Also, we were out in the field for 22 out of 25 days or something stupid, and all the Tests lasted [five days]. By the end, it was just actual exhaustion: I was just knackered physically and mentally from all that had gone.
“From there, the learning was, how can you make sure that from the first to the last game, your standards are still as high as possible? It was similar in Australia, to be honest. I know a few of the games didn’t last as long as people were expecting or wanting, but again, I don’t feel like my standards were down too much,” he said.
