McCullum: Smith is an intelligent batsman

New Zealand

New Zealand batsman Brendon McCullum is enjoying opening the batting for Chennai alongside West Indian Dwayne Smith, saying they feed off each other and bring out complimenting attitudes.

New Zealand batsman Brendon McCullum is enjoying opening the batting for Chennai alongside West Indian Dwayne Smith, saying they feed off each other and bring out complimenting attitudes.

McCullum and Smith are a new pairing in this year's IPL after McCullum moved from Kolkata. They have a century stand and an 85 to their names thus far in five games, and the Kiwi is impressed with Smith's cricketing brain.

McCullum told the IPL website: "It is great to bat with him because he is so powerful and has a lot of options in his batting. He is a very intelligent cricketer as well. I enjoy how wise a head he has about his game.

"He has certainly shown his experience in this format of the game. We seem to have a good rapport and get a good partnership going. We are pretty lucky that both of us hit the ball and hit it in different areas.

"I saw a comment from our captain (MS Dhoni) earlier in the week when he said that Smith and I don't compete against each other but we complement each other, which is nice to have in an opening partnership.

"The captain and the coach have complemented our abilities to play our games. They don't want us to be too aggressive, but just play the style of cricket which has got us to where we are in world cricket at the moment.

"It is always nice to get a leadership team like that to give the confidence to go out and play. What we have seen are reasonably aggressive starts from us, which are in character with how we are as players.

"We are not trying to be what we are not; we are just trying to play our natural game."

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