McCullum enjoying batting with ‘intelligent’ Smith

Chennai Super Kings went into the IPL season with a fresh opening pair in Brendon McCullum and Dwayne Smith. So far, the two have responded with starts of 123, 23, 35, 11 and 85. McCullum said he was enjoying batting with Smith, and added that despite their aggressive styles, they were complementing each other, which MS Dhoni had pointed out earlier.

“It is great to bat with him because he is so powerful and has a lot of options in his batting,” McCullum told the tournament website. “He is a very intelligent cricketer as well. I enjoy how wise a head he has about his game. He has certainly shown his experience in this format of the game. We seem to have a good rapport and get a good partnership going. We are pretty lucky that both of us hit the ball and hit it in different areas. I saw a comment from our captain earlier in the week when he said that Smith and I don’t compete against each other but we complement each other, which is nice to have in an opening partnership.”

McCullum said that the team management also had a role to play in the pair’s success. “The captain and the coach have complemented our abilities to play our games. They don’t want us to be too aggressive, but just play the style of cricket which has got us to where we are in world cricket at the moment. It is always nice to get a leadership team like that to give the confidence to go out and play. What we have seen are reasonably aggressive starts from us, which are in character with how we are as players. We are not trying to be what we are not; we are just trying to play our natural game.”