Smith’s bite of the Big Apple makes a crunch back home

LOSING 5-0 to England has only added to the state of national cricketing crisis that has gripped Australia since the ball-tampering saga in March.

Overnight, sections of the Australian media (not the cricketing part, it should be added) got very excited because they saw “sad and lonely” Steve Smith in New York sipping a beer and window-shopping at estate agents, all the while committing the apparently heinous crime of being alone. Strewth.

Anyway, Smith is in the Big Apple because he is on his way to Toronto to play in the inaugural Global T20 League in Canada, which begins on Thursday.

He is playing for Toronto Nationals and it will be the first cricket he or David Warner (Winnipeg Hawks) have played since Newlands and, even in this sleepy cricketing backwater, attention will be high. Still, as so often with these new T20 tournaments, no one is quite sure what will end up happening until the first ball is bowled.

There are plenty of other big names — the usual suspects, like Chris Gayle, Shahid Afridi and Lasith Malinga — playing in the privately-owned tournament that has six teams playing round robin before play-offs and a final on 15 July, with all games taking place at Maple Leaf Cricket Club in King City, near Toronto.

The big-name players stand to earn £75,000 each. There is English interest too, because James Foster, the Essex wicketkeeper, is assistant coach of Vancouver Knights, Gayle’s team.