Steve Smith joins elite list after grade cricket century

Trumper, Simpson, McCabe, O’Neill, Walters. Former Australia captain Steve Smith joined an elite grade cricket list after blasting his first century of the season.

Steve Smith passed 4000 grade runs. Picture: AAP

• Cape Town: Seven words that tore Smith’s life apart

• Namaste: How banned Bancroft found inner peace

Steve Smith got a few things off his chest late last week and then put his first hundred of the season in the stocking on the eve of Christmas.

He’d be feeling a bit more relaxed about things now, you’d hope. The end of March and the opportunity to play for Australia again still seem an eternity away, but a century for Sutherland District Cricket Club on Saturday was a festive end to a year that festered with all manner of pain.

Smith’s 112no came at exactly a run a ball and contributed a fair portion of the side’s 1-179 in their win over St George.

Steve Smith passed 4000 grade runs. Picture: AAP

The total took him past 4000 first grade runs. He is the only player in Sutherland history who has more than 1000 career runs at an average over 50 (51.06). The next best Phil Jaques whose 9566 runs came at 45.33.

Only eight have done it in the competition’s history and among them are names like Trumper, Simpson, McCabe, O’Neill and Walters.

Playing back at the club is as close to getting away from cricket while staying in the game. David Warner is doing the same at Randwick-Petersham and Cameron Bancroft is the captain at Willetton in Perth.

The weekend witnessed two of the Cape Town Three making their first tentative steps back into the public space.

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Smith returning from a dark place, Bancroft from a strange space. The latter writing, apparently on impulse, from the present to the past, a letter to that bereft young man in Cape Town with “a sense of having lost everything”.

“I know the sadness you are feeling now, sitting in your hotel room in South Africa. Like all challenges in life, time can really heal anything,” Bancroft wrote.

A mother at a Grade game on Saturday in Sydney said she wept when she read it. There was a lot of weeping that morning in Cape Town, teammates cried in the breakfast room as they farewelled their mates, but Bancroft had that empty stare.

I remember him practising his forward defence in a mirror in the foyer of the hotel after learning he’d been banned for nine months. Any other reflection was too painful.

Smith addressed media for the first time since Cape Town. Picture: AAP

He promises himself, in the letter to that moment, that he will become “Somebody who you can stare back at in the mirror and feel love for, be content with, be proud of and grateful for.”

Since, he’s found yoga and charity and his non-cricket self to fill the space.

“Until you are able to acknowledge that you are Cameron Bancroft, the person who plays cricket as a profession, and not Cameron Bancroft the cricketer, you will not be able to move forward,” he wrote in the letter. “This will become a defining moment for you.”

Warner had to pack up his family and find a flight home that day. The other two had minders assigned. His duties and genuine devotion to his wife and two children has given him a purpose the other two did not in the immediate, yawning aftermath of the scandal.

Smith’s appearance in front of the media on Friday, which closely followed the release of an advertisement in the days prior, was a lesson in just how precarious the trio’s situation remains.

Bancroft has taken up the practice and teaching of yoga. Picture: Getty

The path to redemption is pitted with pot holes.

Smith was widely criticised for commercialising the fall and the attempts to navigate a path back in an commercial. It was a misstep.

More alarming were the suggestions he threw the others “under the bus” when he said his failure of leadership was to walk past the conspiracy and say he did not want to know about it.

The Stoics would advocate he respond that as captain he accepts full responsibility and there it ends. Those of us who still crave the complete story want more and as far as we know his response was honest.

Smith said the events leading to the event were well documented, in fact they aren’t. His version stuck to the script which was not challenged by the three involved - although to challenge it was to risk further condemnation.

Here is what we were allowed to know after Cricket Australia’s investigation.

Warner was charged with “development of a plan” and “instruction to a junior player to carry out a plan”.

David Warner and Steve Smith after playing against each other in Sydney Grade cricket. Picture: Getty

Smith with “knowledge of a potential plan” and “failure to take steps to seek to prevent development and prevention of that plan”.

Bancroft with “knowledge of the existence of, and being party to, the plan to attempt to artificially alter the condition of the ball using sandpaper”.

There were more findings but no more light shed on the plan or the deceit that followed.

“Many people will judge you as a cheat, but that is OK,” Bancroft wrote.

Bancroft gave some insight into his motivation in his letter: “The simple mistake of doing something because you were wanting to fit in had come at a huge cost.”

It is a line that doesn’t challenge the accepted version of events.

The impending return of the trio will, like the return of a prodigal partner, raise all manner of past demons and stir barely settled sensitivities.

That said, the sight of Smith’s tangled limbs and vulnerable whims will be welcome, so too the determination of Warner, whether chasing a ball across the grass or sending it soaring over the same. And Bancroft re-engineered promises to be one of the game’s more fascinating characters.

Players to have scored 4000 runs at an average of 51 or better in Sydney grade cricket

Sid Barnes (1934-1953) — 6582 at 62.09

Victor Trumper (1894-1915) — 9244 at 62.03

Bob Simpson (1951-1979) — 10716 at 60.20

Stan McCabe (1928-1944) — 4026 at 55.15

Norm O’Neill (1953-1968) — 4984 at 53.59

Wally Farquhar (1895-1905) — 4593 at 53.40

Doug Walters (1963-1982) — 6343 at 51.15

Steve Smith (2005-2018) — 4034 at 51.06

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Originally published as Steve Smith joins elite list after grade cricket century