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“I know what Odean Smith can do to you so you need to hold on to your chances,” Faf du Plessis, leading Royal Challengers Bangalore for the first time, gave his assessment minutes after their loss to Punjab Kings on Sunday. Du Plessis spoke from experience, having seen first-hand in the Caribbean Premier League how Smith—who has played for Guyana Amazon Warriors, Jamaica Tallawahs and St Lucia Stars—can turn around games.
Last season, Amazon Warriors were teetering at 126/6 after 18 overs against St Lucia Stars, led by du Plessis. With the wily Wahab Riaz set to bowl the 20th over, Smith knew he had to attack medium-pacer Kesrick Williams in the 19th to salvage a par score. Targeting the area between long-off and long-on, Smith hit Williams for 6,4 and 6 off consecutive deliveries in an over that yielded 17 runs, the margin by which Warriors ultimately won. This is what Smith does so well—making things happen in small bursts, with bat or ball.
You probably remember Smith from the Ahmedabad ODI last month where he dismissed Rishabh Pant and Virat Kohli in the same over. And that was a particularly satisfying spell of bowling because Smith wasn’t getting his lengths right for a few deliveries. A member of the West Indies side that won the U-19 World Cup in 2016, Smith is a bowling all-rounder who really came into prominence in the 2021 season where he was the joint second-highest wicket-taker with 18 scalps. He also has a way with the bat, as RCB realised on Sunday night.
If that dropped catch—Anuj Rawat spilled the chance at deep extra cover—wasn’t mistake enough, two balls later Harshal Patel was too slow in whipping off the bails with Smith scampering back after Shahrukh Khan hesitated over a single. With Punjab Kings requiring 36 off 18 balls, this is what happened in the next five legitimate deliveries Smith faced from Mohammed Siraj.
Ball one, Siraj errs in length to allow a backing away Smith to give it a mighty swing. He connects, and connects hard to fire it over deep point. Six.
Second ball, Siraj tries to overcompensate for a wide off the previous ball and follow Smith but he quickly shuffles across the stumps to whip it past short fine-leg. Four.
Third ball, Siraj bowls slower and just back of the length but Smith stands still and swats it over deep extra cover. Six.
A single and a leg-bye later, Punjab Kings needed 17 from 13 but Smith wasn’t done yet. That extra ball conceded due to the wide came back to haunt Siraj as Smith stayed back in his crease to flat-bat a short ball over the bowler’s head for a massive six. Twenty-five runs in eight balls, Smith changed the game just when RCB were probably beginning to hope du Plessis’s 57-ball 88 or Dinesh Karthik’s 14-ball 32 that helped them post 205 would be good enough. But in a game that essentially boiled down to over-by-over batting bursts, du Plessis’s 154.38 and Karthik’s 228.57 strike rates were no match for Smith’s 312.5. That’s what Smith can do to you.
Having reportedly missed out on the T20 World Cup last year on fitness grounds, Smith has progressed remarkably well since then. With a skiddy bowling action and pace that can reach the high 140s, along with his useful batting lower down the order, Smith is quickly proving to be a white-ball cricket asset. “Odean is special. He is a strong guy, can bowl 145. He is still young. With experience, sky’s the limit for him,” senior West Indies player Nicholas Pooran said about Smith during the ODI series against India.
Smith is modelling his game on fellow Jamaican all-rounder Andre Russell, now that he isn’t a certainty in the West Indies side anymore. “Russell’s shoes are hard to fit in, but I am working on my game and, hopefully in the future, my reputation will be built up to a standard of his,” Smith said earlier this year. After Sunday, Smith sure looks good to be mentioned in the same breath as Russell.
Smith however believes he is a work in progress. “I didn’t go so well with the bowling, I have a few stuff to work on. But from a batting (point of view), it was good since I helped my team to get home. It was all about execution. My execution wasn’t on point with the ball, that’s why it went haywire,” he said after Sunday’s match. This is his first IPL match but Smith’s quiet determination seeps through his words. “Punjab Kings haven’t won a title yet, so it’s all about belief at the start of the competition. We watched (documentary film) “14 peaks”. 13 remain for us.”
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