Steve Smith’s airport walk of shame

Steve Smith has been jeered and booed as he was marched “like a drug mule’’ through Johannesburg airport | WATCH

Steve Smith is on his way home from South Africa after being banned for a year.

UPDATE: Steve Smith was jeered and booed as he was forced into a humiliating walk of shame at Johannesburg airport last night.

Smith, wearing a baseball cap and white T-shirt, looked close to tears as he was bundled through OR Tambo International airport by a phalanx of police.

The 28-year-old, who has received a 12 month ban from playing cricket at national or international level, walked with his head down through a gauntlet of photographers and TV cameras, an image more commonly seen with high profile criminals.

He was followed by shouts of “cheat”, with one reporter asking him: “What do you have to say the people who are calling you cheats right here?”

One of Australia’s greatest ever cricketers who made a shocking error in judgement now being ushered through an airport like a convicted drug mule.

Regardless of your opinion of him, you can’t look at this image and say you don’t feel slightly bad for Steve Smith. I know I do. pic.twitter.com/FWyZK6XIjk

— Theo Doropoulos (@TheoDrop) March 28, 2018

Steve Smith surrounded by police at O R Tambo International Airport on his way home. Picture: AFP.

Smith could unravel in exile

For two days, Cricket Australia officials were furious at Steve Smith. Now they are worried about him.

The concern is that Smith, who is believed to have been a tearful wreck since the ball tampering scandal broke last weekend, has the type of personality that could completely unravel in his new life in exile from the only life he has ever known.

People who were furious with him 48 hours ago are now contemplating behind the scenes measures to ensure that he gets through the 12-month ban imposed on him and David Warner last night.

That sounds soft, and I can already hear voices from the 1970s green-and-gold brigade urging him to “take a cement pill and harden up’’.

But the modern world is a better place for such concerns.

Trevor Chappell’s underarm trauma may not have been a life sentence had he been supported in such a way.

Where David Warner is a rough and tumble character hardened by an abrasive life, Smith has essentially been a behavioural cleanskin and his friction-free life has made the current turbulence all the harder to handle.

Smith has grown used to being the hero on horseback, not the man in black. One of the reasons he had such a clear focus on his batting was that the rest of his life was so free of distractions and anguish — until the grand piano dropped from the skies at Cape Town.

For this reason, Australia is walking an emotional tightrope as they attempt to both send him into exile yet make sure he is not too ostracised.

Perversely, a decent break from cricket might be just what he needs. He looked exhausted even before the ball tampering incident.

As a leader who sinned, Smith has no recourse against a ban delivered with the firmness an irate nation demands. He deserves to feel the pain of exile.

But then another mission starts to ensure the grief that is crippling him at the moment does not destroy him.

Smith will be back. He will surely score Test runs again. There will be rehabilitation.

But beneath this likely journey there is a chastening fact — he can never truly be what he was.

He will never captain his country again in any form of the game.

He can rise again as an exceptional Test batsman, but never as a leader.

He could score another 20 Test centuries, yet the most famous event of his career will be the day he sanctioned a grubby little plan to tamper with a ball.

Smith will not have to look far to know that while he may never live down the affair, life will go on.

Mark Waugh’s reputation looked trashed for good when he took money from a bookie in the 1990s, yet he is now a hall of fame member and national selector.

People forgive, though it must be said, they will never forget.