Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Smith acknowledged the challenge of batting in Perth but said he would not have been as blunt as Khawaja.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably not the words I would have used,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThe first day was tricky for batting. It had good pace, bounce and quite a bit of seam movement \u2013 two good bowling attacks going at it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen that happens, sometimes it can be tough to bat. It\u2019s sort of part and parcel of playing in Australia for the last few years. It has those moments where it is really hard to bat, and you got to try and find ways to get through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Khawaja has been ruled out of the second Test in Brisbane with a back injury that flared during the series opener. CA is adamant the three rounds of golf he played in the three days before the Perth Test did not contribute to the spasms that prevented him from opening the batting in both innings.<\/p>\n
Khawaja trained as normal in the lead-up but reported a sore back on day one.<\/p>\n
He is hopeful of featuring later in the series, but with Travis Head set to open at the Gabba, Khawaja may have played his final Test.<\/p>\n
Loading<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s obviously not fit for this one, but he\u2019s doing all the right things to try and get himself fit as quickly as possible,\u201d Smith said. \u201cWe know with Uz he\u2019s been a quality player over a long period of time. I think anyone that plays over 80 Tests is a good cricketer and has done exceptionally well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll look at this game, see how it goes, and then I\u2019m sure that\u2019s a question for selectors moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if he thought Khawaja would play Test cricket again, Smith said: \u201cI\u2019m not sure. He\u2019s been a quality player for a long time. I know he works exceptionally hard on his game. I played the Shield game out here a few weeks ago and he batted really nicely for the 90 that he scored.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s had one hit where he was injured; didn\u2019t do well with his injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not for me to answer whether I think that\u2019s going to happen or not, but all I know he\u2019s been very good for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Smith acknowledged the challenge of batting in Perth but said he would not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-324672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}