Steve Smith is wearing canary yellow pads and a helmet. Two soft steps are taken down the pitch in the Dubai nets. He smacks a bruised white ball over long off. A gleeful voice in the background shouts, “Stevie Smith!”
His last stand as captain has been a blazing triumph. All things Sandpapergate are forgiven and forgotten. Could things have gone any better for Stevie Smith while he’s having one for the Sheikh Zayed Road as Australian skipper at the Champions Trophy? “Probably not,” he says.
Cricket’s big wheels keep on turning like it’s a Lynyrd Skynyrd song and Stevie Smith’s next assignment is Tuesday’s semi-final against India at Dubai. Ever wonder how history will regard certain phases of an athlete’s career? I do. It will dutifully record Stevie Smith’s humiliating and shocking fall from grace – the chastening cheating scandal – before noting he returned as Pat Cummins’ fill-in for a tour of Sri Lanka and the Champions Trophy … and killed it. Win, lose or draw against India, Stevie Smith is finishing his leadership duties on a note so high it could shatter glass.
He orchestrated Australia’s first Test series win in Sri Lanka since 2011. He led the first cleansweep on the subcontinent since 2006. He passed 10,000 Test runs to join Ricky Ponting, Allan Border and Stevie Waugh on the Mount Rushmore of Australian batting. He took his 200th Test catch. Aged 35, like the white-winged dove … sorry, that’s Stevie Nicks. Aged 35, Stevie Smith is going better than ever, a little bit Bradman and a little Benjamin Button – ageing but ageless.
Stevie Smith! Cummins will return for the World Test Championship final against South Africa at Lord’s in June. Which means the Champions Trophy is likely the last time Stevie Smith will call heads or tails on behalf of his country. Sandpapergate’s cloud will forever hang above the names of Dave Warner and Cameron Bancroft but Stevie Smith’s greatest sin was cluelessness about what they were up to.
He was sacked as skipper and sledged by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. He bawled at a press conference and was suspended for a year by Cricket Australia. Infamously photographed having a beer on his own in New York, Stevie Smith looked like the saddest bloke in existence.
A lover of Australian cricket and all things baggy green, he could not fathom the depths of his decline. Nor could he have imagined the renaissance to come. I bet he finds a way to make Australia’s T20 team for the Los Angeles Olympics. I bet. Some blokes just have a willpower all their own. The Games of the XXXIV Olympiad should be beyond him … I suspect he’ll be there in canary yellow pads and helmet.
For now, there’s a crackerjack Champions Trophy semi-final to attend. Will Australia win? Probably not, given the talent unavailable against the unbeaten Indians, who know the Dubai venue like the back of Virat Kohli’s hand, but an understrength Australia is always chance when wildcards like Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Glenn Maxwell and Adam Zampa are in the pack.
The tournament is hosted by Pakistan, seemingly organised by India, who have refused to play anywhere except Dubai, while the Australians have covered more territory than Ibn Battuta, the most renowned of Arab travellers.
“Nice to be in Dubai,” Zampa said. “We’ve had a bit of a hectic schedule, playing a couple of games in Pakistan, going back and forth between cities … but the boys are feeling OK about it. Our preparation’s been OK. With these tournaments, you don’t play a lot of games anyway. They’re all pretty cutthroat.”
This one’s completely cutthroat. India won all three of its group games, all played at Dubai, as Australia fell into the semi-finals via a five-wicket triumph over England followed by the abandoned fixture against South Africa and a washout against Afghanistan.
The worry for Stevie Smith is the vast inexperience of his pace attack. Missing from duty are Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood, and their 308 ODI caps, replaced by Spencer Johnson, Ben Dwarshius and Nathan Ellis, who have the grand total of 20.
“A massive win against England set us up for the rest of the tournament,” Zampa said. “Then the game against Afghanistan, I think the bowling performance was pretty good. Some guys who don’t have a lot of experience in one-day cricket, there’s some young fast bowlers who did a good job for us. The two games we have kind of played, against England and Afghanistan, we feel good about where we’re sitting. But I mean, the tournament really starts now. The semi-finals are even more cutthroat.”
Australia mowed down England’s mountainous 351 with three overs to spare. Head and Stevie Smith failed, registering sorrowful single-digit scores, but Inglis (120no) stole the show with sterling support from Matt Short (63) and Alex Carey (69). Head smoked a quick 59no and Stevie Smith was unbeaten on a sprightly 19 before it rained cats and dogs against Afghanistan.
“The great thing about the first game was the contributions from guys who, and not that you don’t expect it from them, but when Heady misses out and Smudger (Smith) doesn’t play his role through the innings, and to still get the job done, it’s a great feeling for the team,” Zampa said. “Then once someone like Heady comes off in the power play against Afghanistan and the way Smudge started, it makes us feel good about where we’re sitting.”
Johnson has played five ODIs. Dwarshius, four. Ellis, 11. You could barely have a rawer Australian attack if you plucked three blokes from the crowd. They’re a world shy of Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood for gravitas, credentials, fear factor, and the job of taking big wickets will once more fall to Zampa, the 110-game legspinner with an uncanny knack for important breakthroughs at crucial moments of major tournaments.
“One-day cricket is a different format for these new guys and creating wickets upfront can be quite tough,” he said. “I think they’ve bowled in partnerships really well. Personally, I don’t think I’m bowling quite at my best but I like to think the beauty about me is that when I’m not quite at my best, and not feeling that great out there, my ability is still to contribute and take those big wickets. I’m working on some stuff at the moment to hopefully get back to my best but as I said, the ability to do a job for the team and get big wickets is still there.”
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