Watch: Steve Smith uses unique bat to practice ahead of Test Championship finals against India

Ahead of the finals of the prestigious World Test Championship (WTC) 2021-23, both India and Australia have begun their practice in London. Rohit Sharma's boys are set to take on Pat Cummins-led Australia at the iconic Oval Cricket Ground in London from June 7. However, a video of Australian batter Steve Smith from an Australian practice session went viral on social media and left fans split.

In the video shared by the Apex Cricket Council Smith can be seen practising with a special bat to avoid edges during the game. The bat had pre-installed triangular-shaped small black edges. However, Smith perfectly middle all the ball and had great training with his distinctive bat. The video was captioned as "Expect some funk when Steve Smith is at the crease! #Reels #CricketReels #WTC23.”

Here is the video:

 

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Notably, Steve Smith only scored 122 runs in three innings for Sussex, while his skipper in the county Cheteshwar Pujara scored 545 runs in eight innings, including three centuries and a fifty. Meanwhile, After the Indian Premier League concluded on Monday night, Virat Kohli and the other Indian batters are now focused on adapting to the wet English conditions to win the prized Test championship trophy.

Chateshwar Pujara will be crucial for India, says Sunil Gavaskar

Ahead of the prestigious game Indian team is set to play an intra-squad game. Meanwhile, former India skipper Sunil Gavaskar names his ex-factor for the Indian squad. He believes that Chateshwar Pujara's county experience will help the Indian team and he will be an ex-factor for the Indian team. He said, "The fact that he is been around will mean that he will have also seen how the pitch has been behaving at The Oval."

"He might not have played at The Oval, he might be in Sussex not too far away from London but he will have kept an eye on what is happening and his inputs will be invaluable as far as the batting unit is concerned or even as far as the captaincy is concerned," Gavaskar told Star Sports. "He will have the captains here as far as the Oval pitch is concerned and don't forget he has also been captaining the team, so he definitely will have worked out quite a few strategies seeing that Steve Smith, the Australian is his teammate at the moment", he further added.