England's 1986-87 Ashes-winning captain Mike Gatting has challenged Australia to pick up the pieces if they are caught in precarious situations caused by their wonder batsman Steven Smith departing early. Smith came to the rescue in both innings of the opening Test at Edgbaston where the New South Welshman joined the select band of batsmen to carve two centuries in a Test. His superhuman efforts contributed to Australia beating England by 251 runs earlier this week.

"I am not saying Australia are a one-man team, but I think the batting line-up is slightly fragile. If you get Smith out early, it will be interesting to see how they (Aussies) cope with that. Australia were 122 for eight and Smith held everything together," Gatting told reporters at the launch of Fortune Turners (a book written by Aditya Bhushan and Sachin Bajaj) on the famous Indian spin quartet of BS Bedi, EAS Prasanna, BS Chandrasekhar and S Venkataraghavan. The Global Cricket School-published title also dwells on the spinners who missed out on an India cap while the quartet were ruling the cricketing world. One among those tireless tweakers — Mumbai's Padmakar Shivalkar — was present at the function held at the Royal Bombay Yacht Club.