Steve Smith faces million-dollar IPL haircut on way back to World Cup squad
STEVE Smith and David Warner are playing for nothing in grade cricket on Saturday, but the multimillion-dollar impact of the ball-tampering scandal isn’t over yet.
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STEVE Smith will play for nothing in grade cricket on Saturday, and for the rest of the season, but even then the multimillion-dollar impact of the ball-tampering scandal may not be over yet.
Next April’s Indian Premier League shapes as the only genuine high-class cricket Smith and David Warner can play between when their ban finishes and Australia picks its World Cup squad.
The lack of an opportunity to find form was always going to be one of the most brutal aspects of the Cricket Australia bans, however, there is an added complication for Smith at least, in that he’s still waiting to find out if his $2.4 million contract with the Rajasthan Royals will be honoured.
If the BCCI decides that deal has been torn up, Smith will be forced to re-enter the IPL auction, a lottery which could have the deposed Australian skipper facing a massive pay cut given he won’t have played international cricket for 12 months.
But as Smith awaits direction from the Indian Cricket Board, he and Warner will on Saturday embark on their return to grassroots cricket which must not only keep their eyes in but sustain their fragile mental states for the rest of the summer.
Whether or not the pair will ever play in the same Australian XI again is the real million dollar question.
Smith’s path back to the Australian team is considered more automatic than Warner’s, but Test great Steve Waugh emphasised this week that there were no guarantees for either man.
Shane Watson was out in the middle at the MCG when Smith hit the winning runs at the last World Cup in 2015 and is adamant grade cricket is enough to keep the banned duo tuned-up for a UK redemption story in late May.
“From a skill point of view, you don’t lose your skill,” said Watson, a late scratching from Smith’s Sutherland grade team after succumbing to a calf strain at training.
“It’s more so having the foundations there ready to go, which is what I personally had in the lead-up to last year’s Big Bash particularly from a batting point of view.
“Just playing and spending some time in the middle, you naturally are going to step up once the competition level gets stronger. That’s what you get used to and are built to do.”
Watson is scathing about the severity and terms of Cricket Australia’s sanction which banned Smith and Warner from the Big Bash and Sheffield Shield, yet has allowed them to promote Twenty20 competitions in Canada and the Caribbean.
But Smith’s return to Sutherland on Saturday at Glenn McGrath Oval in Caringbah and Warner’s comeback for Randwick-Petersham at Coogee Oval represents a fresh start in front of home fans.
There were initial suggestions that CA may organise pop-up matches for Smith and Warner to play once their bans expire in March 28 that would give them some opportunities to push for World Cup selection, but that won’t be the case – and the IPL will be their only avenue.
Hyderabad coach Tom Moody wants Warner back at his IPL franchise and it seems certain that $2.4 million deal will be honoured.
Cricket Australia is staging an inaugural national Premier Cricket (grade cricket) Twenty20 event in Adelaide between March 5-6, at which Warner is set to feature for either Randwick-Petersham or the side he represented in the Northern Territory Strike League.
Smith helped drag the covers out to cover the centre square at Caringbah on Thursday and Warner hit balls to lower graders out at Maroubra.
Watson believes Smith will relish the chance to simply get back on the field and playing in front of home fans.
“I’ve got no doubt he’ll be enjoying being out there again,” Watson said.
“Of course he’d love the circumstances to be different. But when there are setbacks in anyone’s life, you try and learn from those setbacks to become a better, stronger person and I know that’s how Steve has always lived his life.”
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