Australia captain Steve Smith took all the blame on himself after his team's four-wicket loss against India in the Champions Trophy semi-final clash on Tuesday, March 4. The veteran said, "I missed a full toss. It wasn't ideal." The right-hand batter opined it was his wicket that swung the match decisively away from Australia.
Smith was batting on 73 in the 37th over and looked set to score a big hundred. However, he missed a juicy full toss of Mohammed Shami at around knee height, which eventually rattled his off-stump. From there on, Australia could not break free in the death overs, as only 66 runs were scored from 75 balls. India's death bowlers Shami, Pandya, and Chakaravarthy bowled well and bundled out Australia for 264.
"My plan was to try and put the seamers under a bit more pressure and just rotate the spin," Smith said after the match. "But I didn't do it very well. I lost my wicket at probably a crucial stage. Had I batted a little deeper, we could have potentially got up to near 300 or something. Alex was batting really nicely at the other end. It was a disappointing time to get out, but that's the game sometimes," Smith said at the post-match presentation.
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Steve Smith looks back at Australia's missed chances, which cost the match against India
Smith also said that Australia had a chance to post 300 or even above that score had there been wickets in hand. India kept chipping away with wickets, which did not help Australia to post a huge score at the halfway mark.
"I think we had our opportunities throughout to post something above 300," Smith said. "We were probably just that one wicket down too many at a few stages throughout the innings. If we extended one of those partnerships a little bit, we're probably getting up to 290 to 300, and we're putting a bit of pressure on the scoreboard.
"The square block as a whole, I think, has seen a lot of cricket over the last couple of months. We can see it's pretty tired, and that's probably the reason why we haven't seen a score above 300 in the tournament here so far. So we did a reasonable job, but we probably just lacked a couple of those partnerships just dragging out a little bit further."
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Australia also shelled a few chances as they dropped Rohit Sharma twice, and Virat Kohli was put down on 51. While the former did not cash in on the opportunity, the latter aced the run chase well and scored a match-winning 84 runs.
"I think when you're trying to squeeze the game, and you're trying to build a lot of pressure, you need to take those chances when you've got 260 [264] on the board," Smith said. "But that's the game, it happens. No one means to drop a catch. It's part of the game."
