\n<\/p>\n
Australia batter Steve Smith has been wearing black strips of tape under his eyes as he prepares for the second Ashes Test against England in Brisbane.<\/b><\/p>\n
The day-night match will feature floodlights and the players will use a pink ball.<\/p>\n
The patches have been used in the past by former West Indies batter Shivnarine Chanderpaul to reduce the glare caused by the sun and improve contrast.<\/p>\n
Australia’s stand-in captain was photographed wearing the patches while batting in a nets session, with the anticipation of batting under the lights at the Gabba.<\/p>\n
The method is known as ‘eye black’ and is commonly used in American sports, including American football, baseball and lacrosse.<\/p>\n
Babe Ruth, one of baseball’s greatest players, used it in the 1930s and seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady famously wore paint under his eyes too.<\/p>\n
“There must be sort of science or theory around it,” explained Australia team-mate Marnus Labuschagne when asked about Smith’s patches.<\/p>\n
“I haven’t read into it. I think it’s something to do with glare, especially on the wicket. The glare up from the wicket. Maybe it helped pick the ball up better.<\/p>\n
“I look at it either way, if there is a science behind it or whether it is a placebo. If it doesn’t but it feels like it works, both ways, it works.<\/p>\n
“I would love nothing more than to see him stroll out to the wicket with the Shivnarines and go out there and smack them around everywhere.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Australia batter Steve Smith has been wearing black strips of tape under his eyes as he prepares for the second Ashes Test against England in Brisbane. The day-night match will feature floodlights and the players will use a pink ball. The patches have been used in the past by former West Indies batter Shivnarine Chanderpaul<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cricket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}