Steven Peter Devereux Smith, known for being Steve Smith, is the former captain of the Australian National Team. He’s known for his batting. In 2017, he even reached the second highest test batting of all time, which is 947.
In 2018, Smith was involved in a ball-tampering scandal. It was a scandal that happened and mainly concerned the men’s Australian National Cricket Team. The third Test match that the team had against South Africa and Newlands in Cape Town was when this happened.
It was in March 218 when Cameron Bancroft was caught by the TV cameras trying to rough up one side of the ball by using sandpaper. Doing this can make the ball swing in flight. Investigations found Steve, who was already the team’s captain at that time, and David Warner, the vice-captain, involved in this.
There wasn’t any evidence found that Steve was directly involved in the incident, but this still affected him greatly. Darren Lehmann, Australia’s coach, announced that Steve was to step down as the captain of the team.
Steve did and it was Tim Paine who replaced him. Both Steve and David were suspended from all international and cricket games for 12 months. David was found to be the one who was responsible for the development of the plan and so he will never even be considered for team leadership after this.
Bancroft then received a 9-month suspension for both international and domestic cricket games. He will also not be considered for any tea, leadership for a minimum of 12 months.
Meanwhile, Steve was only found to have known the plan. Since he did not take any steps to prevent this, the suspension and 12-month ban for any team leadership became the results of this. Steve has tweeted that he accepted the sanction and just wanted to put the incident behind him.
He did tell in his tweet that he will do whatever it takes to earn back the trust of the Australian public, and it seems like this is what Steve has done in the past year. In the second T20I that happened on November 5, 219, Steve has a seven-wicket victory against Pakistan. He has an unbeaten 80, but he said that this is still something he’d like to beat.
Steve’s ban from any team captaincy is fast approaching. This ban will be lifted next March and people are already talking about his possible captaincy. This means that the general public, including frequenters of 10cric and many other cricket fans, have already moved on from the ball-tampering scandal.
Captaincy questions are now being thrown to Steve, but he seems to be only giving the same answers for this. He would always say that he’s far from thinking about it and he’s just enjoying that he still is playing for his country.
“I actually think I play better with pressure, that extra pressure when the team needs something more and things like that” Smith said in arecent interview.
“My record probably is better when I’m captain than when I’m not. That sort of pressure doesn’t really bother me. But I’m not thinking about captaincy or anything at this point in time. I’m really comfortable where I’m at and I’m enjoying what I’m doing.”
Justin Langer, the coach of the team, also expressed his happiness when it comes to Steve’s performance. He said, “Anyone who questions Steve Smith and anything to do with batting puts a smile on your face.”
That was what Langer said during a conference after Smith’s 80 runs and 51 balls in the Australian’s seven-wicket win against Pakistan.
“His greatest strength is his ability to solve problems. Whether it is Test cricket or T20 cricket, that’s what he is so good at. The best players in the world do it. The best players adapt to white or red ball, 20-over or Test cricket. It’s not a fluke that he is a great player,” Langer added.
Despite what Steve thinks about becoming a captain again, everybody sees no one else when it comes to replacing Paine. Travis Head is the vice-captain during the Ashes, but he was dropped before that series end. This made sure that Cummins won’t give him the captaincy at all.
Alex Carey can be a possible choice when it comes to being the future Test captain. National selectors are already grooming him for this. Other possible picks for the captaincy are Usman Khawaja, Joe Burns, Will Pucovski, and NicMaddinson.
