SYDNEY: Australia cricket captain Steven Smith has shrugged off his team’s lamentable form on tour and is adamant his side will lift for the Test series against South Africa and Pakistan this season.

Formerly top-ranked Australia have slipped to third in the world Test rankings since being whitewashed 3-0 away to Sri Lanka and their One-day International team was belted 5-0 by the Proteas on tour.

Australia’s squad for the three-match series against South Africa remains up in the air, with a number of struggling players given only one domestic Sheffield Shield match to find form ahead of the opening match in Perth from Nov 3.

“I’ve let that go,” Smith told Australian media of Sri Lanka, where Australia lost their first series in August. “It wasn’t a great tour and I’ve thought quite a lot about it since coming back home, ways we can improve in those conditions.

“Results haven’t gone our way in the last couple of months but that’s the game of cricket sometimes. You have to move on and try and improve.”

Australia sent an under-strength team to South Africa for the one-day series and paid the price with the unprecedented 5-0 whitewash.

South Africa captain Faf du Plessis said he felt the tour might leave a mental ‘scar’ on Smith’s side ahead of the Test series.

But Smith was having none of it.

“It’s a completely different format of the game. We’ve got our two big guns back with [Mitchell] Starc and [Josh] Hazlewood,” he said of the pace duo. “The batters were a little bit disappointing ... but I’ve moved on from that now and it’s about focusing on this summer and Test cricket.”

Starc will be eased back into bowling this week in New South Wales’ Shield match against Queensland after suffering a bad gash on his leg during a freak training accident.

Questions remain over Australia’s third seamer and who will open the batting with David Warner, as Shaun Marsh races to recover from a hamstring strain.

Smith and his colleagues pulled on their pads on Tuesday for day-night Sheffield Shield domestic games with several players needing to impress before the first Test against the Proteas.

Mark Taylor recently claimed only five members of the current Test side, which went down 3-0 in Sri Lanka in September, were assured of their places.

They included Smith, Warner, Peter Nevill, Starc and Hazlewood.

The skipper admitted Australia’s latest performan­ces had been poor against South Africa following the Sri Lanka hammering.

“You have to move on and try and improve. I was disappointed with the way we played in Sri Lanka. We probably let a few opportunities slip so we’ve got to move forward and try to improve in those conditions. There’s a lot of work to do there,” he admitted.

But Smith, himself under the microscope after Australian great Steve Waugh said his captaincy would be closely monitored in the summer Test series against South Africa and Pakistan, insisted it would be different on Australian soil.

“I’m comfortable with where we’re at back in Australia. We’ve played good cricket here in the past and hopefully we can continue to do that this summer.”

Published in Dawn October 26th, 2016