ST GEORGE’S – Af­ter miss­ing the open­ing Test in Bar­ba­dos, Aus­tralian bats­man Steve Smith is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to the line­up for the sec­ond Test in Grena­da which bowls off on Thurs­day.

The 36-year-old Smith was ruled out of the first Test at Kens­ing­ton Oval, which Aus­tralia won by 159 runs, af­ter pick­ing up a fin­ger in­jury in the World Test Cham­pi­onship fi­nal against South Africa.

How­ev­er, Smith, who av­er­ages 56.55 in 117 Tests, is con­fi­dent that he will fea­ture in the sec­ond Test af­ter hav­ing the stitch­es re­moved from the af­fect­ed area.

The vet­er­an joined his team­mates in the Caribbean on Sun­day and is ex­pect­ed to take part in full prac­tice on Tues­day.

Smith will be fit­ted with a thin­ner splint for his in­jured fin­ger and, while he won’t be able to field in his usu­al po­si­tion in the slips, he is ex­pect­ed to have no is­sues while bat­ting.

“For me, it’ll just feel like train­ing as nor­mal, I think.

“I don’t re­al­ly feel any pain or any­thing. (It’s) just get­ting used to the splint on and the slight lim­it­ed move­ment. It’s not too bad, I’ve got a lot of move­ment there now, so that feels good. Hit­ting the ball felt com­plete­ly fine,” Smith said.

“Field­ing some balls in front of the wick­et will prob­a­bly be the strangest thing for me, I don’t think I’ve ever done that in a Test match. Field­ing at ei­ther prob­a­bly mid-on or mid-off or fine leg, is a bit dif­fer­ent to stand­ing at the sec­ond or first slip.”

With Smith set to re­turn to Aus­tralia’s side, it means re­serve bat­ter Josh In­glis is like­ly to be the un­lucky one to make way af­ter he man­aged scores of just five and 12 dur­ing the first Test.

CMC