Steve Smith to return to the place of his humiliation: ‘Still have little flashbacks here and there of it’

The former Australia captain, along with David Warner and Cameron Bancroft, was notoriously involved in a ball-tampering storm in South Africa in 2018.

Australia will play three Tests in South Africa next month. The last time they were there to play red-ball cricket, the Sandpapergate happened when the Aussies tampered with the ball using a piece of sandpaper. David Smith, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft were banned thereafter for different durations. Smith was the captain of that side, and now he is going back to that country again to play Test cricket, a country where he went through hell last time around.

Before the Test series, Australia will also play three ODIs in the African country. The first match will kick off on September 24. Presently, the Aussies are in Zimbabwe for ODIs. Ahead of the SA rubber, Smith was interviewed by News Corp. and speaking to them, he revisited the nightmarish experience that came to pass more than eight years ago. “I’m not a big fan of cameras ... I get anxious around cameras to be honest,” he said.

“That was a traumatic experience in my life, and when I hear the flash of a camera, it makes me revisit that in a way. The 24-48 hours of being told by James Sutherland (then Cricket Australia chief executive) that I was getting banned for a year. That and going through the airport in Johannesburg, getting absolutely mobbed, and then flying back and doing that press conference. I still have little flashbacks here and there of it.

“It was certainly a difficult period, particularly the initial period, a few days after. The mental state I was in was not great. That’s somewhere I’d like not to get to again, but I certainly learned from that and have been able to move forward with my life. I can’t remember a lot about the series. I’ve tried to block most of it out of my memory bank,” he added.

Smith also shared that how now he was used to loud criticism and boos from fans from the stands all over the world. There was one instance in the 2019 World Cup in England when then India captain Virat Kohli urged fans not to boo Smith during a game. “It’s something I’m kind of used to. I’ve copped a lot at times away from home at different venues across my career, and it’s something that I take in my own stride. I use it as motivation to try and go out and do well and try and take a positive from it,” he said.

- Prateek Srivastava is a senior sports journalist having been in the profession for two decades now. He started his print career with the India Today Group and later also worked for the Asian Age. In 2009, sensing the wind of change, he switched to the digital media and joined Mobile ESPN. There, he covered the 2011 Cricket World Cup and 2010 Hockey World Cup as a venue reporter. He did plenty of voice-over work too, over there. After leaving Mobile ESPN, Prateek went on to work for Cricketnext, Gocricket and Cricbuzz. At Gocricket (Times Internet Limited), he covered the 2014 T20 World from Bangladesh. There he also received a team leadership award, given at the end of the month. Prateek has also covered the 2016 T20 World Cup in India, this time working for Sportz Interactive. He also worked for Chinese giants Alibaba over two years and led their ""Short News"" content team at UC Browser. While cricket is Prateek’s expertise, he has also done a lot of golf. In fact, he has covered India’s first two European Tour events back in the late noughties. He has also done extensive writing on football having been associated with the Indian Super League for three seasons. Finally, Prateek is a literature aficionado and swears by Philip Roth and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and when he doesn’t joke, he is usually quiet and at work.Read More