Life has come a full circle for Australian cricketer Steve Smith as he gets ready to lead the national team in a Test series after being dethroned a few years back because of his role in a ball-tampering scandal in 2018.
The 35-year-old from New South Wales has been named captain for Australia's two-Test tour of Sri Lanka for the Warne-Muralitharan Trophy series to be played in Galle as regular skipper Pat Cummins is on paternity leave and also to treat a minor ankle injury.
Smith was banned from captaincy for two years in 2018 because of the infamous Sandpapergate scandal in which some players of the Australian team under his captaincy used sandpaper to distort the ball to help their bowlers to trouble South Africa in the Cape Town Test.
Smith has led his country four times since the ban ended -- against England in Adelaide (2021), led against the West Indies in Perth (2022) before donning the captain's hat in a couple of Tests in India in 2023. But this tour of Sri Lanka will be a bit different as the last time when he captained Australia in the Island nation it ended in a disastrous 3-0 series defeat.
About his rise, the once-fallen hero says, he is quite relaxed about captaincy and is not craving to take it over on a more permanent basis.
Any chance I get to take over when Patty's (Cummins) not here is good fun. I try and still do things my way. It’s been cool to have a couple of opportunities here and there.
It’s going to be a cool tour. I think I understand spin and the subcontinent really well in terms of angles and what needs to happen. Also, the tempo of play that needs to be played at certain times.
I’m probably a bit more relaxed now. I’m pretty chilled and just laid-back. I’ll just enjoy it.
Smith said the spin-friendly conditions of Sri Lanka would be tough and challenging for his team.
They can be tough conditions. They play pretty well there, particularly if the wickets are quite extreme. It’s just guys developing plans as batters… different methods that allow them to score and survive. It’s very different to playing spin here in Australia. Whatever that is, stick to it from ball one, trust it.
The tour is also special for Smith as he is eyeing a big milestone in his career -- he is set to join the 10,000-run club.
Smith was left disappointed at the end of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series against India as he fell one run short of becoming the 15th man to score 10,000 or more runs in cricket.
One run… it hurt a little bit at the time,” Smith said. “It would have been nice to have ticked that off in front of all my friends and family here at my home ground, but hopefully, I can knock it off first thing in Galle. I probably let it wander (in my mind) too much throughout the game. It’s a cool milestone to tick off.
The right-handed batter, who made his debut against Pakistan in 2010, has scored 34 hundreds in his 9,999 Test runs in 114 matches. Smith is not only looking forward to reaching the 10,000-runs milestone but also adding a century or more to his list in the two-match series.
He will be Australia's most experienced batter in Sri Lanka in a squad with quite a few young batters.
