Steve Smith has revealed how he misjudged the Temba Bavuma edge that left him with a compound dislocation of his finger and in doubt for the West Indies Test series starting later this month.

With his right little finger encased in a protective splint and bandage, Smith said he felt “pretty ill” when he saw the angle at which the finger had been bent, the result of being unsighted by Bavuma’s edge.

The catch was really Australia’s last chance to win the World Test Championship final at Lord’s as Bavuma and Aiden Markram went on to a match-winning partnership.

“I was obviously standing pretty close with the helmet on there,” Smith said on the Lord’s outfield. “As we’d seen throughout the game, a lot of nicks went short of first and second slip, so the plan was to stand pretty close and I lost sight of it with the angle Mitchell Starc was bowling and it went inside Bavuma’s hip.

“So I actually didn’t quite see it until really late and it kind of dipped on me a little bit late as well. It was tricky – it obviously didn’t go in my hand very well and, fortunately, there’s no break there – it just split the skin and dislocated it which made me feel pretty ill at that stage.

“But I think in a splint for eight weeks now and maybe able to play with it in a couple of weeks. It’ll depend on my functionality and what I’m able to do, but it’s probably the best result I could have hoped for.”

Asked where the game was lost for Australia, Smith argued that they should have made more runs in the first innings; he was still puzzled by how he managed to get out to Markram’s part-time spin in a game where Nathan Lyon finished wicketless.

“In the first innings, it would have been nice to score a few more then,” he said.