“Steven has benefited from the rest. It has shown in his four day form where he has bowled like the speed of light and he’s been a terrific asset for us.

“We’re doing well with the guys that we’ve got.

“Qualification is in our hands now. We said at the start of this run of three games that every game is pretty much a final for us and that it is still in our hands.

“It’s two down, two to go – we’re now two games away. With each one we win the next one becomes so much more important.

“We’re fired up to make sure the next two games go the same way, and we’ve got confidence to make sure we qualify.”

While the bowlers have played their part, new man David Warner has had a compelling impact at the top of the batting – as much making runs as influencing Phil Mustard to follow suit. Hailing the big-hitting Aussie for sparking Mustard into excellent form, Smith tipped the pair to plunder more runs this weekend.

“David’s probably given Phil a bit of a nudge,” he said.

“We saw at Derby that Dave was very talkative to Phil. Phil knows what he’s doing but he maybe helped him along a bit and gave him a bit of a fresh outlook.

“Those two seem to work very well together. You might think they’re two big hitting left handers so they can’t possibly work well together but that’s not “the case – you saw on Tuesday and Wednesday that they can work well together.

“We were probably guilty of messing about with our order earlier on in the competition.

“That probably comes as a result of other things not going for you.

“But when you’ve got a settled formula and you keep doing the same things, people understand their role a bit better and we’ve just got to keep on doing the things you’re doing.”