Steve Smith told Aussie teammates he considered never returning after ball-tampering ban
At Steve Smith’s first meeting with Australian team-mates after the sandpapergate scandal, he opened up candidly on the toll it had taken, a moment captured in a new documentary to be aired this month.
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Steve Smith admitted to teammates he at times felt like walking away from the game during his year-long suspension, during his first meeting with Australian players after the ball-tampering affair last year.
Smith and David Warner’s comebacks are a key subject of an eight-part documentary, The Test, the first episode of which will be released on Amazon on Thursday.
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In the group gathering Warner also explained to teammates that he had reflected during his time away on how to be a better team person on his return.
Warner talked of having completed plenty of self-reflection and also believed he was returning to a different team than the one he left in South Africa a year earlier.
“In the last 12 months I have had a lot of reflecting to do,” Warner said in the Dubai meeting.
“With cricket and what happened in the past and getting better as a team person as well. From looking the outside in you can see the whole team as a we have grown a lot.
“How we have been accepted in the past 24 hours. I don’t really feel like I’ve left.
“There was no unease or anything like that. It was back like I went out of the team yesterday and came back today.”
Warner’s note of team harmony comes after coach Justin Langer installed a “we- not-me” approach midway through the 2018-19 summer, as Australia reached their lowest ebb.
Meanwhile, Smith’s frank admission came just months before one of the greatest Ashes series off all time, where he hit 774 runs at an average of 110.57
“From a personal point of view it was pretty tough and I’ve had times where I probably didn’t want to come back and play to be perfectly honest,” Smith said in the meeting.
“It was when I got the brace off my arm a couple of weeks ago (in February 2018) that I went ‘shit, I’m ready to go. I want to play again’.”
Smith also warned teammates they may need to wrap their arms around he and Warner in England that year, anticipating the verbal abuse that was to come from crowds.
The documentary also reveals coach Justin Langer’s frustrations over the issue of spectator behaviour, which are a constant theme of the series through the Ashes and World Cup.
The behind-the-scenes documentary spans Langer’s appointment as Australian coach in May 2018 through to the side retaining of the Ashes last September.
Originally published as Steve Smith told Aussie teammates he considered never returning after ball-tampering ban