Steven Smith – Bulletproof Truth

Elgar says 2015 spit spat with Kohli resolved over drinks

“If you do that again I’ll fucking poes you with this bat. I will absolutely knock you out on this field.” — Dean Elgar to Virat Kohli.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

DEAN Elgar alleges Virat Kohli spat at him during South Africa’s Test series in India in November 2015. Elgar says the two made up over a drink in India’s series in South Africa in January 2018. That wasn’t the only striking claim made as the cameras rolled.

Elgar, who played the last of his 86 Tests against India at Newlands earlier this month, made the incendiary allegation during a panel discussion led by Nick Rabinowitz, a comedian. Chris Morris and Jean de Villiers, a former captain of South Africa’s men’s rugby team, were the other participants.

“I came in to bat, and I was holding my own against Ashwin and Jadeja,” Elgar said. “Kohli spat at me, and I said to him, ‘If you do that again I’ll fucking poes [a South African profanity meaning hit] you with this bat. I will absolutely knock you out on this field.’”

Elgar said AB de Villiers, Kohli’s RCB teammate, confronted India’s then captain: “AB went up to him and said, ‘Bud, why are you spitting at my teammate? That’s not on.’ Two or three years later we’re playing in South Africa, and [Kohli] calls me aside and says, ‘Can we have a drink together at the end of the series? I just want to apologise for my actions.’ The punchline is we drank until three in the morning.”

Kohli is famously difficult to reach, even for senior Indian journalists. Cricbuzz asked the Virat Kohli Foundation whether they could confirm Elgar’s allegation or direct the question to someone who could. No response has been received.

The discussion, billed as “Banter, [sic] with The Boys”, is “presented by” the SA20’s title sponsor and available online. In it, Australia’s explosive Test series in South Africa in March 2018 is revisited, and Elgar says off-field issues played a role in his decision to retire from the international game.

In 2018, Steve Smith — then Australia’s captain — David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were fined and banned, and publicly shamed at home after they were caught, during the third Test at Newlands, using sandpaper to roughen the ball. During the first Test at Kingsmead, Quinton de Kock retaliated to hours of on-field verbal abuse by Warner by insulting Warner’s wife in a stairwell altercation with her husband. That prompted Warner to threaten to assault De Kock. Spectators and CSA staff at the second Test at St George’s Park wore face masks to taunt Warner.

Morris, who was in the squad for the last two of the four matches, said tensions had been heightened by events in Durban: “That switched the South African team on properly. I remember AB saying, ‘Ons gaan hulle nou seermaak.’ [‘Now we’re going to hurt them.’] AB is usually placid and relaxed when he’s batting; he does his thing. But in that [Newlands] Test he was in such a zone.

“When it [the exposure of ball-tampering] happened AB was batting with Aiden Markram. AB blocked the ball and the big screen showed what had gone on with the sandpaper, and that’s when the crowd got involved. AB didn’t hear a thing. He was so focused on fucking the Australians up, because they were abusing him.

“Aiden walked down the wicket and said, ‘Abbas, something’s gone on here.’ AB said, ‘What do you mean?’ As he said that, it played on the big screen, showing Bancroft with the ball and putting it [the sandpaper] away. AB blocked the next ball. Bancroft came to pick it up. AB looked at him saying, ‘Hey! Cameron! Hey!’ Bancroft sheepishly looked up and made eye contact. AB went, ‘You’re fucked now, mate.’”

Elgar said he had sympathy for the Sandpapergate three: “I felt sorry for the players, especially because of what happened afterwards. Watching Steve Smith be escorted out of the airport with 30 cops around him. He didn’t rape or kill someone.”

According to Elgar, he was assaulted by Andrew Symonds after the St George’s park Test in that series: “We went to the casino. It was two o’clock in the morning. The late Andrew Symonds was there. He was upside down [drunk]. He saw a great opportunity to give me a peek. For nothing. He smacked me. I looked at him, and I looked at AB. And AB said, ‘Oh no — don’t do this.’ I went forward [to punch Symonds] and AB pulled me back.”

Of his retirement, Elgar said: “I should have done it ages ago, really. I’m not totally retired — just from international bullshit. I’ve still got a lot of good years left in me. Unfortunately it’s not going to be on our shores. It’s going to be God Save the King [in a three-year contract to play for Essex].”

Elgar led South Africa in 18 Tests and was replaced by Temba Bavuma in February last year. But he ended his career back in charge because Bavuma was ruled out at Newlands with a hamstring injury. “It’s amazing when you get axed as captain and they want you to fill in and do the job again,” Elgar said. He was South Africa’s captain during the tumult that came with CSA’s administrative meltdown in 2020, during the 2021 allegations of racism running deep in the game, and when it became clear that South Africa’s presence as a Test entity would diminish. On top of that, Shukri Conrad, South Africa’s Test coach since January last year, has denied reports that he and Elgar do not have a good relationship.

“There’s a lot of external things that I could get into, but I’ve got to choose my words,” Elgar said about his international retirement. “It’s been a tough two or three years of playing for the national side. It’s been hectic with off-field things that have taken time away from me and my family. And when you play Test series you want to play against the best in the world and you want to play four Tests, not two.”

Asked by Morris whether “at any stage did it become a las [drag] to play for the country”, Elgar said: “There were times when it became a lot of hard work and you lose your enjoyment. Playing for your country is the greatest honour, but I had to deal with a lot of stuff off the field — especially with the captaincy role.

“We had a new board and a coach [Mark Boucher, who was cleared on racism charges] who was going through a lot of scrutiny in South Africa, if not the world. You take all of that on board and you lose your focus. Your focus is actually to go out and play and score runs and win games. My focus shifted a lot. You wipe the shit out of your eyes and two years have gone by. And you’re like, ‘I’ve wasted two years of energy.’ I’ve got about a hundred thousand more grey hairs. Why put yourself through that?”

Elgar answered that question when he walked away at Newlands. As he did so, having been caught at first slip off Mukesh Kumar in his last Test innings, a familiar figure embraced him warmly. Maybe Kohli was keen on another drink.

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South Africa prepare for take-off with soaring win over Aussies

“Steve was like, ‘What do you think?’ and I said, ‘No, I don’t think it’s close.’” – Marnus Labuschagne’s conversation with Steven Smith before DRS ended Smith’s innings.

Telford Vice / Lucknow

THURSDAY’S men’s World Cup match at the Ekana Stadium was two balls old when a black kite appeared above the northwest quadrant of the ground. Rolling its wings voluptuously to help it tread air, it made a serrated silhouette hanging all but still in the mercilessly cloudless steel sky.

For a long moment as it hovered at about the same height as the 50,000-seater stadium’s symmetrical ring of roof, the bird searched the ground many metres below. Then it dived; a cold, plummet out of the heat onto some unfortunate edible minding its own business amid the blades of grass, as unaware that two of cricket’s most celebrated teams were about to trample its turf as it was of its impending death. As the kite approached earth its talons flared, ripped and gripped. It departed, fully loaded, with the same shocking suddenness with which it had arrived.

South Africa’s obliteration of Australia was slower but no less brutal. Two of the five sixes Quinton de Kock hit to reach his second century in as many innings in the tournament sailed through the same patch of sky that had belonged to the kite’s, the same spot the ball descended from for two of the six catches the Aussies dropped.

Pat Cummins’ team looked, throughout, about as low as the kite had been high. That’s even though their bowlers pulled things back after De Kock and Temba Bavuma had shared the only century stand in the five ODIs played at this ground, which was followed by half-century partnerships between De Kock and Rassie van der Dussen and then Heinrich Klaasen and Aiden Markram.

Consequently South Africa’s 311/7 was probably 30 runs short of what they might have scored. But that hardly mattered. Australia’s steady drizzle of spilled catches cast a gloom over their time in the field. At the crease, besides their own strangely flaccid performance, they fell victim to what might be called creative umpiring.

How DRS determined that a straightening delivery from Kagiso Rabada that struck Steven Smith on the flap of his pad as he jumped upward would have hit the stumps — not veer over them, as had seemed clear to the unassisted eye — had more than Smith and his partner, brother-in-batting Marnus Labuschagne, gasping in disbelief.

“I was looking at the screen and I said to Joel [Wilson] good decision [for not out],’” Labuschagne said. “From front-on it looked like it was going down leg. Steve was like, ‘What do you think?’ and I said, ‘No, I don’t think it’s close.’”

Unsurprisingly, Rabada differed: “I was hoping for umpire’s call [to retain the review]. I felt as if it just skidded through. It didn’t really bounce much. Steve walks across his stumps. That’s his trigger. From my angle and Quinny’s angle, it looked quite good. We decided to go up. I thought it was close, it was not as obvious as missing.”

De Kock was among the doubters: “I didn’t really think it was out. I said it’s close. I said it’s at least umpire’s call but let’s have a check. ‘KG’ said it was pretty close. We were both half-convinced, so let’s have a look. When we saw the initial replay on the screen we didn’t think it was out, then it came out with three reds. We were shocked and ecstatic at the same time.”

Then Richard Kettleborough, the television official, decided Marcus Stoinis had been caught — brilliantly by De Kock diving down the leg side — off Rabada despite the ball touching the glove on Stoinis’ bottom hand while that hand was not holding the bat.

Kettleborough’s stated reasoning was that the gloves were touching each other, which is the correct interpretation. Complicating matters further, the replays provided to the press and public seemed to show that Stoinis’ gloves weren’t in contact with each other at the critical instant. In an informal survey of four current and former umpires who have stood internationally conducted after the incident, two agreed with Kettleborough and the other two said Stoinis shouldn’t have been given out.

The non-striker was again Labuschagne, who said: “The umpires really didn’t know what was going on. They saw what we saw. It looked like his hand was off the bat — it hit the glove. They didn’t go to the side-on angle; Marcus and I were asking had they checked. They just saw the spike front-on.

“It looked like there was clear daylight between the two gloves and the handle. But I have been into the third umpire’s room [in the past] and the screen is big and the picture is clearer than what we have on the screen.”

It seems the Australians will knock on officialdom’s door on the issue, if needs be. “It was confusing and I’m sure we will get clarity or go and seek clarity,” Labuschagne said. “It’s a World Cup and we don’t want small decisions that can be avoided to change the outcomes of games. Obviously in the situation we were in it’s hard to say it would have changed the outcome but for the future we want to get it right.”

Rabada was as in the dark as anyone else on the field: “I thought it hit his thigh-pad and my teammates felt they heard a woody sound. Stoinis didn’t look convincing; he looked as though he had touched it. The controversy was around the fact that his hand was off the bat when the ball made contact with his glove. We thought it was the bat handle. That’s not up to us. We reviewed it and the umpires made a decision.”

De Kock, too, was none the wiser: “I just tried to make the catch, whether it was off his bat or glove or whatever. It was too quick for me to see what happened, and I was on the blind side. I just put my hand up because everyone else was appealing. I went up with the gallery. A lot of the guys said it was off the bat or the glove, so ‘Tems’ [Bavuma] went for it.”

How did Rabada, an innocent bystander to the drama, stay engaged and grounded enough to take 3/33 in eight slick overs? “It’s about focusing on the next ball. We just go by the decisions the umpires make, and the decisions the technology influences. The technology favoured us today.”

Before, during and after all that, South Africa played scintillating cricket. Good luck to anyone tasked with bowling to De Kock in the form he’s in: contained and calculating, his strokes grooved more with intent than aggression, his runs not gushing but flowing. Seeing him put the ball away with such ruthless certainty, again and again, brought back thoughts of that black kite. Lungi Ngidi’s immaculate first spell of five overs cost nine runs and brought the important wicket of David Warner. Controversies aside, Rabada bowled like the younger man he used to be. The delivery he produced to bowl Josh Inglis shimmered with an arresting beauty. The ball veered towards middle, jagged towards off after pitching, and made Inglis look silly as it nailed middle and off.

Stoinis’ dismissal reduced Australia to 70/6 in the 18th and made the rest of the match a funereal march towards defeat, which was sealed in the 41st when they were bowled out for 177. South Africa have dismissed them for fewer 12 times in the 109 ODIs between the teams, but this time the result landed with more gravitas.

The Australians have now lost four consecutive matches — the first three to South Africa and England in 2019 and India on Sunday — for the only time in their World Cup history. This is a team, mind, who have won of the dozen titles yet contested, and who did not lose any of the 33 completed games they played in the tournament from May 27, 1999 to March 16, 2011. They will return to the scene of Thursday’s disappointment to play Sri Lanka on Monday in what looks, bizarrely, like a battle of the bottom-feeders.

The South Africans, who are off to Dharamsala to take on the Netherlands on Tuesday, won’t be excited just yet. For one thing, they won’t have forgotten what happened when they met the Dutch in last year’s T20 World Cup. For another, they won their first five matches in the 1996 tournament before coming unstuck against Brian Lara in the quarterfinals. For still another, in 1999 they won four on the bounce, then two of their next four, and then suffered the consequences of the infamous tie in the semifinal against Australia.

So victory over Sri Lanka in Delhi on Saturday and the Aussies on Thursday is nothing more nor less than played two, won two; seven to go. Beating Australia does mean more, but not enough to make South Africans near and far believe this time will be different. Sometimes the early bird doesn’t catch the worm.

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Arise opener Steven Smith

“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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