“I don’t know what they’re thinking with ‘Smithy’ in the T20s.” – Michael Clarke on Sky Sports Radio.
Telford Vice / Cape Town
“PLEASE welcome Australia’s opening pair, Steven Smith and David Warner.” Several ifs and buts would have to be settled before that could become true, but it would be remiss not to raise the prospect as the Australians’ white-ball tour of South Africa looms. And not only because of the long, lingering shadow cast by Sandpapergate.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Smith has never opened the batting in his 358 international innings across the formats. But he will, selection chair George Bailey said on Tuesday, do so in the three T20Is against South Africa at Kingsmead on August 30 and September 1 and 3. Warner, who has taken guard at No. 1 or 2 in all but a dozen of his 438 trips to the crease for Australia, has been rested for the rubber. There is thus no chance of Smith and Warner opening the innings in the T20Is.
But both are in the squad for the five ODIs, which will be played in Bloemfontein and at Centurion and the Wanderers from September 7 to 17. As is Travis Head, who has opened in 18 of his last 22 ODI innings. Head scored 89 runs in three innings in India in March, but banked 240 in three games at home against England in November — 152 of them in a stand of 269 with Warner, who made 106, in the third match at the MCG.
Australian conditions are closer to South Africa’s than India’s, which adds to Head’s already decent argument to keep his place at the top of the order. But will that remain the case should Smith shoot the lights out in the T20I series? How could that not make him a candidate to open in the ODIs? Wouldn’t Australia want to have a look at him in the role before the World Cup in India in October and November?
Smith has, after all, batted only one place lower in 76 of his 126 ODI innings, among them his most recent 22. He has scored three centuries in those 22 games — after taking guard in the 28th, 23rd and fifth overs. In six more of those innings he has been summoned to the crease between the second and the sixth overs, and scored 53, 61, 76, 85, 94 and 98. So there can be no argument about his abilities facing the new ball.
Despite that making a case for Smith to open, especially in T20Is, would have been outlandish until January. Getting him into the XI seemed difficult enough. He has played in only 63 of Australia’s 150 T20Is from his first in February 2010. And for good reason: this is his least impressive format.
Only Joe Root has scored more Test runs than Smith’s total of 9,320 from the Australian’s debut in July 2010. He has 32 centuries in Tests and 12 in ODIs. His Test average is 58.61 — it topped 60 before a series in India in February — and 44.49 in ODIs.
But all he has to show after 51 T20I innings are four 50s. Of Australia’s 33 current players in the format 14 have higher strike rates than Smith’s 125.21. He was overlooked for four of Australia’s five matches at last year’s T20 World Cup. In 155 innings in other T20s before January he had scored one century — 101 off 54 at No. 3 for Rising Pune Supergiants against Gujarat Lions in Gahunje in the 2016 IPL, a tournament he hasn’t graced since 2021.
That Smith’s T20 fortunes were about to change didn’t seem apparent when he drove off the back foot and was caught at extra cover for 36 in the eighth over of a Big Bash League match at the SCG on January 15. But something had changed: Smith had opened the batting, with Josh Philippe, for the Sydney Sixers.
Two days later, against the Adelaide Strikers in Coffs Harbour, Philippe and Smith opened again. Smith hammered 101 off 56. Four days after that the same pair walked out at the start of a game against the Sydney Thunder at the SCG. Smith’s unbeaten 125 came off 66.
He followed that with 66 and 18 in away matches against the Hobart Hurricanes and the Perth Scorchers, but by then the narrative had shifted — after spending most of his international career as a meh T20 option Smith will come to South Africa having been given a platform to dismiss that perception.
“It was pretty exhilarating, [Smith’s] innings in the Big Bash, and I thought it highlighted the skill set he has and what he can do,” Bailey told reporters when he announced the squad. “The way he played, that’s something we want to see replicated internationally. So it’s important that he gets an opportunity to have a crack.”
Michael Clarke wasn’t convinced. “I don’t understand [Smith’s selection] … that to me is embarrassing for the selectors,” Clarke said on Sky Sports Radio on Tuesday. “They had him in the World Cup squad last year and he couldn’t make the XI. Selections over the past 15 months have been absolutely confusing. Smith not playing in that World Cup, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There’s just no accountability. It’s just swept under the carpet. I feel like I’m just watching a different game.
“I don’t know what they’re thinking with ‘Smithy’ in the T20s. I don’t think he’s playing any other T20 cricket around the world. He’s not getting a gig in the IPL, didn’t get picked up there. He must still want to play though.”
Maybe Clarke missed the Big Bash. Maybe he needed a hook on which to hang Bailey and his co-selectors, Andrew McDonald and Tony Dodemaide. Maybe Smith will make Clarke’s opinion look silly. Maybe not.
Nothing would be uncertain about the ire vented at Smith and Warner if, somehow, they do open in the ODIs in South Africa, where the crowds will never let them forget their central roles in the 2018 ball-tampering scandal. But the howls of outrage would ring with hypocrisy.
South Africa were done for ball-tampering three times between October 2013 and November 2016. In each instance the players concerned — Faf du Plessis twice, once while he was captain, and Vernon Philander — were defended by CSA. They were also largely supported by the public. So stones thrown, metaphorically, by South Africans at Smith and Warner would come from the front yard of a house made entirely of glass.
What happened in Australia in 2018 couldn’t have contrasted more starkly with South Africa’s embrace of their own ball-tamperers. Anger came down from on high in the shape of then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who weighed in hammily. Smith and Warner, then Australia’s captain and vice-captain, as well as the third stooge, Cameron Bancroft, were banned by CA and head coach Darren Lehmann resigned in tears.
The difference in the effect prompted by the identical cause made you wonder whether South Africa and Australia were on the same planet, nevermind in the same hemisphere. But let’s not let logic get in the way.
The crass crescendo would rise in South Africa’s stands despite Smith and Warner having already batted together in the country since Sandpapergate. They shared 50 for the second wicket in a T20I at St George’s Park and put on 26 in an ODI in Paarl, both in February 2020.
To be fair to the fans it’s one thing for Smith to join Warner in the middle after the fall of a wicket, quite another for them to stroll out together ordained to open the opera that is an innings.
Not that South Africans need prompting to take aim at Aussies. Many of them cannot understand the self-harming fuss made in Australia over the 2018 debacle. How, they ask, could Australians have been surprised when their team were exposed as cheats? The rest of the cricket world have held this to be self-evident for years.
So Smith and Warner opening in the ODIs in South Africa next month, admittedly a long shot, would stir old ugliness. But it could be worth the bother — and not only to hear what the Wanderers, where thoughts become words or approximations thereof unfiltered except through beer, thinks about that.
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