Steve Smith revealed his battle with vertigo that forced him to miss the Adelaide Test against England in the Ashes series. This was the second time that Smith missed a match in the last six Tests and the 36-year-old had earlier faced symptoms of vertigo in his career. Smith was replaced by Usman Khawaja for the third match of the series.
Smith has returned to the fold and will lead the Aussies in the fourth Test in Melbourne and spoke about how he was struggling ahead of the third game. The star batter said he wasn’t tracking the ball well and told Australia coach Andrew McDonald that he wasn’t feeling well.
“As soon as I started batting in Adelaide I didn’t feel great, wasn’t tracking the ball well, had a bit of head stuff going on. Three days out, hit again, played golf that afternoon. I’d already spoken to Ron [coach Andrew McDonald] and was like ‘I don’t feel great’, so he goes ‘just try to get out and do some things and see how it goes’.”
“So I played that afternoon, felt awful that night. I felt terrible the next day, didn’t hit or do much. Then I hit the next morning and felt ordinary again. I tried the next day, morning of the game and I just wasn’t I couldn’t track the ball. Felt dizzy. When I had my head back and come up (to face), I needed to recalibrate every time my head came up, it was all over the place, and in the end we made the right decision.”
“I felt awful that day. And playing in that heat wasn’t going to help me – those first two days were bloody hot. So, yeah, I sort of got to the decision, which was the right one, although I think I would’ve liked to bat on that wicket,” Smith told The Age on Wednesday.
Smith suffered a concussion during a T20I game against Sri Lanka in 2022 and has spoken earlier about having vertigo symptoms. The Aussie stand-in skipper talked about how he has been dealing with the issue, by using goggles with a laser in it and other training methods.
“I’ve had a few different things with my head in the past, head knocks, some vestibular stuff, some vertigo stuff. It was more the vestibular stuff this time. It wasn’t the room spinning with the vertigo, which I’ve had previously, but it’s the eye-tracking and not being able to focus on things, particularly moving targets.
I felt really slow, really heavy in the head, tightness in the neck and not much fun. I’m still talking to people about it. I’ve got some training exercises I need to do, tracking things, wearing goggles with a laser on it, drawing different shapes and things like that. So it’ll be a bit of that, strengthening my neck. Fingers crossed it’s gone and never comes back. That would be nice,” added Smith.
Smith batted with anti-glare eye patches under his eyes to adjust to the conditions in pink-ball Test in Brisbane. He said that he is considering using the patches in normal games as well.
“I felt like I batted pretty well in Brisbane, even with the pink ball, it’s not been one of my strengths in the past. The black things I was wearing under my eyes, I’m 100 per cent certain they worked, and I think I’ll be bringing them out in normal night games against the white ball as well,” said Smith.
Smith has scored 103 runs in two matches so far in the Ashes series.
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