ST GEORGE’S – Aus­tralian bats­man Steven Smith is poised to make his come­back in the sec­ond Test against the West In­dies in Grena­da af­ter com­plet­ing his first full train­ing ses­sion since suf­fer­ing a com­pound fin­ger dis­lo­ca­tion dur­ing Aus­tralia’s clash with South Africa at Lord’s in the World Test Cham­pi­onship fi­nal a cou­ple of weeks ago.

How­ev­er, the team will need to reshuf­fle their field­ing set­up, as Smith, who is ex­pect­ed to re­place Josh In­glis, will be un­able to take his usu­al po­si­tion in the slips.

Smith spent the Bar­ba­dos Test re­cov­er­ing in New York and on­ly re­join­ing the squad in time to have his stitch­es re­moved.

While he will need to wear a pro­tec­tive splint for ap­prox­i­mate­ly six more weeks, both he and coach An­drew Mc­Don­ald re­main con­fi­dent in his abil­i­ty to han­dle the de­mands of Test crick­et.

Un­der clear skies at Grena­da’s Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, on the Aus­tralians’ first vis­it to the venue, Smith eased back in­to train­ing.

He be­gan with throw­downs from as­sis­tant coach Matthew Wade be­fore pro­gress­ing to the cen­tre-wick­et pitch­es, where he faced ad­di­tion­al de­liv­er­ies, in­clud­ing spin from Nathan Ly­on.

Lat­er, he took on the pace of Josh Ha­zle­wood and Mitchell Starc in the nets, though the bowlers un­der­stand­ably held back their full in­ten­si­ty giv­en the tight turn­around be­tween match­es.

Re­ports in­di­cate Smith nav­i­gat­ed the ses­sion with­out dis­com­fort, a promis­ing sign as Aus­tralia pre­pares to rein­te­grate their star bats­man in­to the line­up.

CMC