Graeme Smith
Graeme Smith
Graeme Craig Smithis a former South African cricketer and former captain of the South African cricket team Test side, having succeeded Shaun Pollock after the 2003 Cricket World Cup. He was succeeded as captain of the ODI side by AB de Villiers after the 2011 Cricket World Cup. He is also currently the overseas player and captain of English side Surrey. He appeared in his 100th Test against England on 19 July 2012. He captained his 100th career Test match...
ProfessionCricket Player
Date of Birth1 February 1981
add bowling coming felt head obviously settled today
Coming in to today I felt a lot better about my game. I was more settled and a lot calmer in my head and obviously bowling well does add to your confidence.
batting focus helps hoping medical rather second staff until waited
Sometimes, when you're batting with an injury, it helps you to focus your mind, and I'm hoping that will be the case. The medical staff would rather I waited until the second Test, but I really want to get out there and play.
best bit close finish hard hitting hurt mark matched pick playing positive step teams
The teams are matched up pretty well. If anything, we need to pick it up a step in our ruthlessness on the field. We need to finish things off. We may just get a bit tense, and that comes down to inexperience, playing the best team in the world. I think 1-0 down is disappointing, but it hasn't hurt us and in a lot of ways, I'm very positive about us. As captain, I feel we're very close to hitting the mark ...and we're going to come back hard in Sydney.
both guys innings taken
If we'd taken our opportunities, things could have been really different. Both guys we put down in the first innings went on to make hundreds.
hard nice ricky seems team trying
Ricky seems to be more of a nice team environment, with everyone contributing. Everyone is going to do it their way. Ricky is trying too hard to find his own way of captaining.
batter key point side view
I'm a key batter in the side more than anything else, and from my point of view that's disappointing, I've got a lot of starts.
definitely five four months takes
To play someone for four or five months definitely takes its toll, it's like Groundhog Day some times.
both brought decide whether
We need to look at the wicket. We brought him out as an option. We need to decide which way to go. Whether to play Nicky or him, or both of them.
batting bowling gives jacques somewhere stability
Obviously, Jacques gives us another bowling option, and he'll (also) give us a lot of stability somewhere in the batting order.
momentum picked win
We want to keep the momentum we picked up with that win over Australia.
johnson likes pressure
We are always going to put the pressure on the likes of (Shane) Watson and Johnson and Lewis.
looking seems
It seems that Kepler is looking for a fight.
best chance guys winning
It's up to the selectors but we've got to go with guys who will give us the best chance of winning the game.
gave hours match positive response situation surprised three
They only gave us one option, and we had no positive response in the match situation after their first innings. It surprised us when they batted on so long - it was two or three hours more than we thought they would.