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The proliferation of the T20 format has drawn dark clouds over red-ball cricket. While there have been quite a few modern-day cricketers who are focusing only on white-ball cricket, 21-year-old Will Smeed is the recent one to join the bandwagon.
Notably, Smeed is one of the most promising names in English cricket and made his debut for the Lions earlier this year. While representing Birmingham Phoenix, Smeed even smashed a maiden century in the Hundred, in August.
In a fresh development, Smeed has signed a two-year white-ball deal with Somerset and retired from first-ball cricket. Explaining his decision to leave red-ball cricket, Will Smeed said that he feels he is better suited to white-ball cricket.
"After a huge amount of thorough and considered discussions, I feel that I need o solely focus my attention on the limited-over formats in order to become the very best cricketer I can be," Smeed was quoted in Somerset’s press release.
The English batter further informed that his decision was not taken without thorough consideration and confirmed that he discussed the matter with a lot of senior players.
"I want to be the best player that I can be, and to do that I believe that this need to be my focus. I know how much our members love red-ball cricket, but unfortunately, I haven’t been performing how I would like to in the longer form of the game," he stated.
"The easy option would have been to carry on playing red-ball cricket and try to fit everything in and reach a certain level across all formats, but I want to be the best that I can be," Smeed added.
The cricketer further claimed that he is not denying the possibility of not playing red-ball cricket in the future but backed his decision by claiming that he currently wants to focus on white-ball cricket, wanting the decision to be right for him and Somerset.
