Test Athletes – Athletes can be very superstitious. But Australian star Steve Smith has a strange superstition: he doesn’t sleep before batting in the first innings during a Test match. Smith recently opened up on this superstition in an episode of The Switch with former England cricketer Kevin Pietersen.

Smith told Pietersen, “I’ll probably struggle (to sleep) until I bat in the first innings and then I’ll be quite calm. Even if I go out and face five balls in the first innings and it’s the end of the night or something like that, I’ll be fine.

But until I actually go out and play the first innings, I don’t know. I just, I’ve always struggled.

” Story continues below this advertisement WATCH: Steve Smith talks about his superstitions To which Pietersen asked if it was a case of pre-match jitters. He said that he had heard many stories of how Smith lived in his room with just shadow batting. “No, it’s excitement.

I’ve always used that time to visualize. yes, I do some shadow batting. Some, not as much as I used to, but most of my visualization happens when I should be sleeping.

So, you know, it’s probably not something you would say is normal or something you would tell people to do. But that’s where I do my visualization and once I get in there and start playing, I Okay, and then I’ll go to sleep.

” Smith then added: “I’m not very superstitious, you know? I tie my shoelaces on my socks. You know, that’s the extent of it.

” At this point, Pietersen said he heard another story about how Brad Haddin was bowling to him before a day’s game and Smith had scored a century. “Then he had to keep bowling to you every morning.

You used to search for him every morning. But he said that if you score back-to-back hundreds, he would be happy to keep bowling to you.

” On this, Smith explained: “It was against India. early summer. I scored four centuries in four Test matches.

So I was stopped and had to throw it to me. “.