SMITH OUT FOR 12
Officials fear for Smith after 12-month suspension
DISGRACED Australian cricket captain Steve Smith is escorted by police to a departure area at the Johannesburg airport in South Africa last night.
Smith and vice-captain David Warner have been suspended for 12 months and sent home in the wake of the ball-tampering scandal.
FOR two days, Cricket Australia officials were furious at Steve Smith. Now they are worried about him.
The concern is Smith, who is believed to have been a tearful wreck since the balltampering scandal broke, has the type of personality that could unravel in his exile from the only life he has known.
Smith and his vice-captain David Warner have been given 12-month suspensions, while Cameron Bancroft has been rubbed out for nine months.
People furious with Smith two days ago are now contemplating behind-the-scenes measures to ensure he gets through the ban awaiting him.
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.
Where 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 turbulence 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 just be what he needs. He looked exhausted even before the ball tampering incident.
As a leader who sinned, Smith has no recourse against a ban set to be 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 crippling him does not destroy him.
Smith will be back. He will surely score Test runs again. There will be rehabilitation.
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. People forgive though, it must be said, they will never forget.