‘You’re wearing them the wrong way’: Steve Smith reveals conversation with Shivnarine Chanderpaul about wearing eye blacks for Pink-Ball Ashes Test

“I actually messaged Shivnarine Chanderpaul and asked him what his thoughts were, whether he wore the chalk or the strips. He said the strips, and he thinks it blocks out 65% of the glare. And he also said, ‘I’ve seen photos, and you’re wearing them the wrong way’. So yesterday I put them on the right way.”
“I agree with him. I think it certainly stops the glare. Yeah, I’ll be wearing them,” Smith said on Wednesday.

Reiterating the difficulty in batting against the pink ball under lights, Smith said that the ball tended to move a lot more randomly compared to the red ball.
“It’s hard to bat all the time. It’s a tricky one. The ball reacts obviously differently to a red one. It can change quickly. It can start moving randomly.

“You’ve got to try and play what’s in front of you at that time, and when it does shift on you, and the ball starts doing something different, you’ve got to try and come up with plans to counter that, whether it be more aggressive, whether it be going to your shell and trying to get through that period. Everyone’s different. It’s trying to be one step ahead when it does start to shift,” he said.

Chanderpaul developed a reputation for batting with eye blacks under his eyes. The 51-year-old had said in 2018 that using the patches helped him take a large percentage of the glare off his eyes.