GALLE
\nAustralia\u2019s Steve Smith joined a select group of batter to reach 10,000 Test runs on Wednesday during the first morning of the opening Test against Sri Lanka.
\nSmith started the match on 9,999 runs and on his first ball pushed for a single off Prabath Jayasuriya in Galle to be the 15th player and fourth Australian to the milestone.
\nThe stand-in skipper raised his bat to acknowledge the applause from the crowd.
\n\u201cFortunately hit that one in the gap so nice to get that one away,\u201d the 35-year-old told Australia\u2019s 7Cricket.
\n\u201cNice to tick that off,\u201d he added.
\nSmith joined fellow Australians Ricky Ponting, Allan Border and Steve Waugh in a list led by India\u2019s Sachin Tendulkar, who made 15,921 runs in his red-ball career. Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar was the first to cross 10,000 runs in Test cricket when he achieved the feat against Pakistan in 1987 at Ahmedabad.
\nSmith is leading Australia in the two-match Test series after regular captain Pat Cummins opted out due to the birth of his second child.
\nHe has an impressive average of more than 55 across 114 prior Tests, including 34 centuries since his debut in 2010.
\nSmith started as a leg-spinner who batted at number eight but soon rose to become the number one Test batter and captain of Australia.
\nSmith is recognised as a modern-day great and part of a famous quartet of new-era batter including India\u2019s Virat Kohli, Kane Williamson of New Zealand and England\u2019s Joe Root.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GALLE Australia\u2019s Steve Smith joined a select group of batter to reach 10,000 Test runs on Wednesday during the first morning of the opening Test against Sri Lanka. Smith started the match on 9,999 runs and on his first ball pushed for a single off Prabath Jayasuriya in Galle to be the 15th player and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":76308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76315,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76297\/revisions\/76315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}