Steve Smith's elevation as Australia Test opener has not yielded results for the side but coach Andrew McDonald backed the batter to sail through the challenges in the home Test series against India later this year.

Smith has played four Tests against West Indies and New Zealand as Usman Khawaja's opening partner but his form with the bat has been tottering. India will travel to Australia to play a five-match Test series in November to defend their Border-Gavaskar Trophy which they retained in 2018-19 and 2020-21. The 34-year-old has only managed to post one half-century as Test opener following David Warner's retirement. He scored 91* in the second innings of the second Test against West Indies. In his other innings as opener, Smith scored 12, 11*, 6, 31, 0, 11 and 9. "They await (challenges against India), and I think it will be an internal motivator for him. He wants to open, it's a position that he came to us around and we think he can make it work," McDonald told cricket.com.au. "He'll be able to work through that, it's a new challenge for him, it's a new position," he added. McDonald further said that a four-match sample is not sufficient to judge Smith's credibility as a Test opener. "If you're bringing in a new opener and you gave them four Test matches, and then said 'okay; we're going to shift that after four Test matches' would you think that's fair or unfair? I think that's reasonably unfair," said the South Australian. Australia coach feels that 'special' efforts are needed to make the changes in the current order of the batting line-up. "That's not to say there won't be changes, but at the moment we've won two-nil here (against New Zealand), and had a 12-Test run where we won eight with (four) of those being away (in England and NZ)," McDonald said. "It's going to be a hard group to infiltrate, it will take something special I think," he signed off.