Cricket Australia hatches plan to reintegrate Smith and Warner

Cricket Australia has hatched a plan to secretly fly Steve Smith and David Warner to join the one-day team in the UAE.

David Warner (left) speaks to Steve Smith on day 5 of the first Test match between Australia and Pakistan at the Gabba in Brisbane in 2016.

Cricket Australia has hatched a plan to secretly fly Steve Smith and David Warner to join the one-day team in the UAE, despite the pair being left out of the squad that was named late last week.

The organisation confirmed the plan to reunite the pair with the team ahead of their anticipated recall for the World Cup, but was reluctant to go into details about the transition process that is deemed necessary because of cultural and personnel changes since their departure.

Warner and Smith are free to play for their country again in 17 days, having each served a 12-month ban for their roles in the sandpaper ball-tampering scandal in South Africa last year.

The incident that turned Australian cricket inside out occurred in Cape Town on March 24 and the players incurred their respective penalties on March 28 after a brief investigation.

They will be available to play in the last two games of the five-match series against Pakistan on March 29 and 31, but it was decided that everybody’s best interests were served if they stayed with their Indian Premier League franchises until the World Cup side is called together for a training camp in Brisbane in May.

There have been reports that the two would not be chosen by their IPL franchises until the bans finished but The Australian understands this is not correct and they will be available from the start of the tournament later this month.

The meeting between the pair with the current players and coaches is part of a plan drawn up by Justin Langer and Cricket Australia to reintegrate the trio of banned players, Smith, Warner and Cameron Bancroft, back into a culture that has changed significantly since they were last part of the dressing room.

The players spent time drafting their own response to the fallout from South Africa, working with former Test opener Rick McCosker to draft a 38-word Players’ Pact.

Langer had input into that pact and spent significant time after replacing Darren Lehmann as head coach spelling out to the players how things needed to change in terms of the way they approached the game. Captain Tim Paine has quietly put his stamp on the Test side while Aaron Finch has done the same with the limited-overs team.

Both Smith and Warner are expected to be critical elements of the World Cup and Ashes in England later this year, and will be part of an exclusive group who spend almost five months on the road with the two squads in what are the most demanding series on the calendar.

Players spend a lot of time stuck together on buses, in hotels and at meetings on the extended tour of the UK.

Langer has been in regular contact with Warner, Smith and Bancroft since taking the coaching reins.

All three players have been around squads at different times in the past 12 months, but this is the first time Smith and Warner will take part in a formal reintroduction to a full Australian squad.

Players denied any rifts among the playing group following the incident in South Africa, but there were repeated reports of strains. In November Langer admitted there was “angst” and likened the broad situation to a dysfunctional family.

“There’s going to be a process for the boys to come back and it is really important we start working on that process,” he said at the time. “We can’t get to the point and just say ‘right they’re back’. It’s not fair on them, it’s not fair on the team, it’s not fair on everyone.”

Whether they should be reintegrated and how it was to be achieved has been a high priority for Langer. The coach has only just begun to find some clear air after a string of losses by the side and failures from individual players in the early days of his tenure.

Australia beat Sri Lanka convincingly in the two-match series at the end of the summer and in recent days manufactured two significant victories to square the ODI series against India at two-all.

The Test and ODI squads have, after some time settling, started to take shape in the absence of Warner and Smith and their return will be at the cost of other players who have filled roles while they are gone.

The pair are recovering from operations on their elbows. Smith posted a video of himself having his first hit in the nets 12 days ago. Warner is more advanced in his recovery, returning to grade cricket on the weekend with a century for his club Randwick-Petersham at Coogee Oval.