Australia’s Travis Head is in action. | Image Credit: Reuters
Australian batter Travis Head loves batting under the shadow of Steve Smith as it helps him perform well.
Head’s counter attack of 146 not out from 156 balls put Australia in a commanding position after the first day of the World Test Championship final against India on Wednesday.
He shared an unbeaten 251-run stand with Smith who was five runs shy of a hundred.
Also read | WTC Final 2023: Head and Smith run India to shreds with big stand on Day 1
“I always say that I really enjoy batting with Steve because of the amount of attention he gets. He’s one of the best players in the world, probably our best player,” Head said.
“He’s our best batsman, he’s unbelievable in these conditions, and he gets a lot of attention from the opposition in terms of schemes and how difficult he is to bowl, so I always say go out to bat -bat to him, like you. In the shadow of that, you can stay under the radar and do your business,” he said.
Head hammered 22 fours and the only six in the game so far for his maiden century outside Australia.
The southpaw said his current mindset and the technical changes he made to his batting after 2019 contributed to his impressive run.
“Losing the toss in the morning I thought it was going to be a challenging day. It was nice to contribute well to get off to a good start.”
Talking about his approach, he added: “I said in the lead-up to the game, if the balls are there to score, I will score here. There are challenging times but the ball gets to the boundary very quickly here if you can see the middle of the bat.
“Technically, I have made those changes but for all around. I felt I had to adapt to every condition. The foundations of my game have definitely changed a lot since 2019.”
