Smith confident Zampa can shine at World T20

Australia captain Steve Smith has backed leg-spinner Adam Zampa to make a positive impression at the World Twenty20 in India.

While the host nation are outright favourites for the tournament, which moves into the Super 10 phase involving all of the leading teams on Tuesday, Australia can be expected to mount a strong challenge given the number of powerful batsmen at their disposal.

Much could depend on how well Australia go with the ball, with the 23-year-old Zampa among several relatively inexperienced options available to Smith.

The skipper is confident his fellow New South Wales representative, who made his international debut against New Zealand only last month, can rise to the challenge.

“I’ve seen him [Zampa] play for a long time now and I know his skill set pretty well so I think that does help a little bit when captaining someone you’re pretty close to,” Smith is quoted as saying by Cricket Australia’s official website.

“I’ve seen him come a long way and I’ve seen him learn and develop really well and hopefully he can bowl really for us in this World Cup.

“I think he’s improved a lot over the last couple of years. I thought he bowled beautifully in South Africa [during Australia’s brief tour ahead of the World T20] and I thought he bowled really well in the one-dayers he played in New Zealand as well.

“He’s got a lot of variations. He reads the batsmen really well which I think is very important in this format of the game and he’s very confident in his skill set.”

Smith remained non-committal on whether Australia are likely to use Zampa and fellow spinner Ashton Agar in the same side.

“We’ll sum that up as we go along,” he added.

“Obviously we’ve got Ashton Agar and Adam Zampa here, along with Glenn Maxwell who bowls spin as well, so we’ve got plenty of options.

“It’s just about summing it up on the day and what we expect from the wicket and the opposition. We’ve got plenty of options here which is nice.”