Australia batter Steve Smith contemplates on the obstacles of taking David Warner's spot as opener

Cricket Australia lost one of their pioneer opening batters David Warner After he announced his retirement. Warner played his last at the AUS vs PAK Test series, which the home team won with a clean sweep. Warner has retired from the longer format of the game, which has put up an open spot for the team to replace. Steve Smith is among the names who have been appointed as the replacement for the batter, but he has been finding it challenging as he acclimates to the role.

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Steve Smith is finding it challenging to fill in for David Warner's role

After David Warner announced his retirement from Test cricket last summer, Steve Smith pushed himself forward to take his place, although the batter has faced some difficulties adjusting to his new batting role. The decision was unexpected since it deviated from the practice of assigning experts, such as Cameron Bancroft, Matthew Renshaw, and Marcus Harris, to the opening position.

The 34-year-old Smith, who is regarded as one of Australia's best players ever, has not fared well in the batting order after being promoted. In four Test matches, he has averaged just 28.50, well below his career average of 56.97 and close to 10,000 runs.

"I'm not reading too much into it. You know, I feel like I've still been batting well," Smith, a member of the Star Sports Incredible Star Cast, told PTI in an interaction.

"A few things I'd like to fix up a little bit technically, but I've had that going throughout my whole career, and it doesn't really matter where I'm at in that respect. We'll wait and see," he added.

In his defence, Smith pointed out that while the pitches he batted on as opener were tricky, the opposition batters did not flourish on them too until the ball had lost its sheen.

"It's been challenging so far. We've played with some tricky wickets, particularly new-ball wickets that have done quite a bit. It has been challenging. I'd love to sort of turn it around and score some runs up there, that's for sure," he said.

"(You) can't sort of underplay how difficult the wickets have been. A lot of the top orders that we've played against haven't scored a great deal of runs, and it hasn't been until the 30-40 overs-mark that we've seen the wickets get a little bit better and the lower order score some runs,” he added.

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Later this year, the two sides will compete in a five-Test series for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Smith, who has not committed to any team in the future, expressed excitement about playing that many games in the series.