Will Smeed: Birmingham Phoenix teenager on reaching The Hundred final

Will Smeed bats for Birmingham PhoenixPA Media

Batsman Will Smeed has been one of the surprise packages of the inaugural Hundred

When Will Smeed's agent called him out of the blue one morning, waking him up to ask if he wanted to play for Birmingham Phoenix in The Hundred, even his mother did not quite believe it when he went downstairs to break the news.

At just 19 years old, and having only signed his first professional contract last summer with Somerset, getting a last-minute call-up as an injury replacement to play in one of the competition's eight franchise teams was not quite what the batsman had been expecting.

"Crazy is probably a pretty good word to describe it. Everything just seems to have happened really quickly, and I'm just trying to take it all step by step and see where it goes," Smeed told BBC Points West.

"But yeah, so far it's been amazing and I'm just loving every minute of it at the moment."

Smeed is the youngest male player in this summer's inaugural Hundred but has become one of the tournament's revelations. His Phoenix team topped the standings to go straight through to Saturday's final at Lord's, where they will play Southern Brave.

'Pressure is a privilege'

In his first three matches Smeed hit 146 runs in three innings - among them an unbeaten 65 - while his 36 off 13 balls, a strike rate of nearly 300, helped Phoenix to victory over the Rockets.

The teenager, however, has a habit of exceeding expectations. A former pupil at Somerset's Millfield School and King's College Taunton, he caught the eye when, aged 16, he scored a century alongside former England opener Marcus Trescothick for Somerset seconds.

Then, in his second match for Somerset last August against Gloucestershire in the T20 Blast, he hit 82 off 49 balls.

The pressure of expectation can often be a burden, but Smeed seems to be taking it in his stride.

"I've never really struggled with it to be honest, I think the fact that I have sort of had that from such a young age I've got used to it," he said.

"And I think it was Finn [Allen], actually, one of our guys who said 'pressure is a privilege' and I think that rings pretty true. If people are expecting a lot of you it's probably because you've earned it, and just try and use that as a positive and take it as confidence, that people are expecting you to do well."

Learning his trade

Smeed describes himself as someone who "loves learning", which is why he's also in the middle of studying for an Open University degree in maths and economics alongside his burgeoning cricket career.

"You're always one injury away from the end of your career, so I want to make sure I have something to fall back on," he said.

"And that also sort of takes the pressure off this as well, if I know there's something else I can do if cricket doesn't go to plan and it's not all on cricket. And it helps keep me busy because we have a lot of free time in the winters between games and such."

He's quick to point out he's very much learning in cricket too, no more so than at The Hundred in a team alongside the likes of England regulars Moeen Ali and Liam Livingstone.

"I'm just trying to draw on all the experience the guys have. They've obviously played all around the world and are sort of coming into the peak of their powers - so just like, what's worked for them.

"A lot of it is mental rather than skills-based stuff, because obviously everyone plays differently. There are a few fundamentals which obviously help everyone, but generally it's more around the mental side of things and coping with pressure."

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Somerset's Will Smeed was a late call-up to The Hundred for Birmingham Phoenix

Building his confidence

Smeed might have felt plenty of nerves before his first match in The Hundred, but he's been growing in confidence as the tournament has progressed.

"When I got picked I was like, 'should I really be here, am I good enough?'. I guess the fact that the first few games went as well as they did sort of confirmed that I am capable of doing well at this level," he said.

"Obviously, you always want to do better than you have done and that's no different for me. There are definitely things I could have done differently in those games.

"But I think it's just given me the confidence going forward that I can perform at this level and that's definitely a massive thing."

While the standout performances have been putting Smeed's name in the headlines, he's been working this winter on making his game more consistent, and also trusting his own abilities.

"I think, it's very hard in T20 cricket or The Hundred, if you face a couple of dropped balls, you can put a lot of pressure on yourself," Smeed said.

"I think that's where just having confidence that you'll catch up, and that's what you see the really good players do. They might be struggling for 20, 30 balls but they back themselves to catch up at the end and they don't give their wicket away, and more often than not they do catch up and make up for it at the end of the innings."

Whatever way the result goes in The Hundred final, and wherever Smeed's career goes when he returns to Somerset, he says he is not the type to look too far into the future. He would prefer to just concentrate on his next match.

"I sort of just try and take every game as it comes and try and score as many runs as I can in every game I'm playing in and just see where that takes me," he said.

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