DUBAI, UAE – Nathan Smith has been draft­ed in­to the Desert Vipers squad for the Exxon­Mo­bil Guyana Glob­al Su­per League, re­plac­ing the with­drawn Kyle Jamieson.

Cur­rent­ly in the Caribbean for the on­go­ing ODI se­ries against the West In­dies along­side team­mate Daryl Mitchell, the fast-bowl­ing all-rounder is al­ready scout­ing con­di­tions for the Vipers ahead of the tour­na­ment’s start next week.

Speak­ing on the Vipers Voic­es pod­cast, Smith not­ed soft, slow wick­ets and rain im­pact, pre­dict­ing spin will play a ma­jor role.

“Hope­ful­ly any in­for­ma­tion I pick up here will come in handy,” he said, stress­ing that quick adap­ta­tion will be key in the short-for­mat event.

Fresh off a Play­er-of-the-Se­ries per­for­mance against Eng­land, where he took 16 Test wick­ets, Smith hint­ed he may de­ploy the same tac­tic of hav­ing the keep­er stand up to the stumps in Guyana’s slow­er con­di­tions.

“I think in Guyana the pitch­es will not bounce as much ei­ther, and they will be a bit on the slow­er side, so it is def­i­nite­ly some­thing we could think about if play­ers are us­ing their feet. It worked re­al­ly well for us in the Test, so it is def­i­nite­ly some­thing we could think about if guys are look­ing to use their feet and move around quite a bit.”

The tour­na­ment marks Smith’s first fran­chise crick­et ex­pe­ri­ence.

“I think it is such a short tour­na­ment, so whichev­er teams adapt and ad­just to the con­di­tions and make the most of those con­di­tions will, along with a lit­tle bit of in­di­vid­ual bril­liance, have the best re­sults.

“Hope­ful­ly we can get off to a fly­er and win those first cou­ple of games and get ahead of the pack.”

CMC