Roberts acknowledges sandpaper trio manning up as bans confirmed

NEW Cricket Australia chief Kevin Roberts says banned players Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft accepted CA’s decision not to reduce their sanctions with “maturity”.

Roberts is in Antigua supporting the Australian women’s team, which is today playing for a fourth T20 world title.

Roberts said the CA board wanted to “sincerely reconsider” the sanctions and he felt comfortable the right decision was made.

He said he spoke to the trio after CA made its decision.

“They were all really mature about it,” Roberts said.

“They’ve been under a huge amount of pressure and scrutiny, so I think, if nothing else, for that decision to be confirmed, it gives them an opportunity to start looking forward, rather than looking back.

“As much as I’m sure that they might have wanted to have come back earlier, at least now they know they’ve got confirmation of that date.”

Roberts hasn’t spoken to the trio’s Australian teammates about the board’s decision, but he informed coach Justin Langer and captains Tim Paine and Aaron Finch before it was made public.

Former skipper Steve Smith can return to the international field on March 30, but cannot be considered for the captaincy for a further 12 months.

Roberts said it was too early to say if Smith would be captain again.

“I’m really happy with the leadership qualities of Tim Paine and Aaron Finch in the respective formats,” he said.

“We really owe them the respect of the empowerment that comes with clear air, so for me or anyone else to speculate about Steve wouldn’t really af- ford our captains the space they need to lead the team.

“But in time, who knows … It’ll be great to see Steve Smith back playing for Australia, so we’ll take one step at a time.”

Roberts acknowledged the men’s early-season schedule – with four matches against South Africa and now a T20 series against India before the Test series kicks off in Adelaide on December 6 – had been far from ideal.

“What we’ve seen the last couple of weeks on the men’s side of the game has been one of these really challenging periods where we’ve had three ODIs, we’ve had a T20 international and we go pretty quickly into a Test match,” Roberts said.

“I don’t think anyone would pretend that that’s an ideal scenario. It was the most workable scenario under these circumstances.”