Downfall of Smith paints portrait of a broken man
Tears will not dry readily as Tim Wigmore asks how long the road to redemption could be
‘To see the way my old man’s been... and my mum, it hurts.” As Steve Smith, consoled by his father, fought back tears in his press conference at Sydney airport, it rather had the feel of a sporting tragedy for our times. A dashing icon of Australian sport, the national captain and the best Test batsman in the world, brought down by a combination of naivety, lying to match officials and the press during a ham-fisted cover-up, and the opprobrium of social media.
They were the most public and poignant tears of any Australian cricketer since Kim Hughes’s infamous resignation at the Gabba in 1984.
A week earlier, Smith had been enthroned as not just Australia’s Test captain and the No1 batsman in the world but someone so good that at the end of last year he reached second place in the International Cricket Council’s historic Test batting rankings, trailing only Donald Bradman. He had an Indian Premier League contract worth £1.35million a year, where he was captain of the Rajasthan Royals. He was the face of the nation’s most popular cereal.
Aged only 28, months after an Ashes series in which he had been master of all he surveyed, Smith could take aim at Test cricket’s greatest batting records: most runs; most centuries; almost everything, indeed, bar Bradman’s 99.94 average.
For now, all of this has been lost. Smith will not play for Australia for another 12 months; he cannot captain them for another two years – and even that is “conditional on acceptance by fans and the public”. His image with the public, who have come to look to their national Test captain for solidity and moral leadership that their prime ministers cannot provide, has been shattered. The champion has become a cheat.
Yet athletes have cheated, and been called out for doing so, since the ancient Greeks. And sports fans have often shown themselves altogether more forgiving than Smith could have imagined as he was escorted out of Johannesburg airport by police to protect him from the baying mob.
Think of WG Grace, the greatest cricketer of his age and simultaneously a cheat so brazen that, when he was bowled first ball,
Warne’s example shows public can forgive
he once calmly returned the bails to the top of the stumps, told the bowler: “They have come to watch me bat, not you bowl,” and carried on. Think of Thierry Henry and Diego Maradona, remembered for their wizardry with their feet more than illicitly using their hands. Or think of Shane Warne, whose year-long drugs ban is considered more a characteristic, almost endearing misdemeanour than a stain on his name or the game.
For Smith, Warne’s example may be particularly inspiring: not just because it shows how the Australian public can forgive their cricketers, but also because it shows how elite sportsmen cannot only endure breaks, but be reinvigorated by them. After returning from his ban, Warne played international cricket – and brilliantly – for another three years, until he was 37. When he returns, Smith will not yet be 30; his second career could well last longer than his first.
Smith’s tears in Sydney will not dry readily. The days, weeks and months ahead will be ones of contrition and regret, disbelief that he has squandered what he loves in a few moments of folly. If the events of the last week will always be an inextricable part of Smith’s story, they may yet be the prelude to a classic redemption tale.