Steve Smith’s bullying of Monty Panesar is cruel and shameful ...Middle East

PERTH — Three weeks before the start of the Ashes, Metallica played Optus Stadium. So it was apt Steve Smith held court at the same venue on the eve of the first Test. Enter “Sandpaperman”, if you will.

Not that Smith would like that gag given his deplorable press conference rant at Monty Panesar in response to a clearly pre-planned question about the England cult hero’s suggestion that Ben Stokes’ team should sledge Australia’s stand-in captain about the 2018 Cape Town ball-tampering scandal.

You may not have seen Panesar’s comments he gave on behalf of obscure bookmaker AceOdds.com a few weeks back. They were barely picked up by publications in the UK.

“Ben Stokes and the England team have got to make Steve Smith feel guilty and play on that,” he said. “Say something like, ‘I don’t think it’s ethical he’s the captain, I don’t think he played the game fairly.’ Really get into him and make him feel guilty about it.”

Yet Smith has now brought those comments to the attention of everybody and ensured “Sandpapergate” is now back at the top of the news cycle.

Monty Panesar said England should reignite Sandpaper-gate during the Ashes…Steve Smith came prepared. pic.twitter.com/Kspp5nuBXv

Smith was giving this press conference on the eve of the Ashes because Pat Cummins, Australia’s actual captain, is currently out with a back injury.

You may remember Smith used to be his country’s captain before he was stripped of that honour seven years ago for his role in arguably the most shameful episode in Australia’s sporting history.

It came during the third Test at Newlands, when Cameron Bancroft was caught by TV cameras rubbing sandpaper on the ball. Smith and David Warner were implicated. Apparently Australia’s bowlers were none the wiser about the whole thing. And this was the first time the Aussies had used sandpaper. England’s Stuart Broad commented at the time that it was “strange” they had tried this tactic after they’d managed to get prodigious reverse swing during the 2017-18 Ashes that had finished just a few months before.

The reaction in Australia was cataclysmic. All three players were sent home in disgrace and received lengthy bans by Cricket Australia. Smith also broke down on his return home from South Africa during an emotional press conference alongside his father. “Captain cry baby” ran the back-page headline of the Daily Mail.

This, of course, was a long time ago. England’s players likely had no intention of bringing up “sandpapergate” again. They’re too nice.

But Smith’s reaction to a planted question from Australian journalist Bharat Sundaresan about Panesar’s comments may have changed the game. If the players don’t mention Smith’s cheating past, the Barmy Army likely will after he tore down a much-loved English cricketing figure.

For clarity, here is Smith’s response, referencing Panesar’s embarrassing appearance on Mastermind in 2019, in full: “I’m going to go off topic for a second here. Who of you in the room has seen Mastermind, and Monty Panesar on that? Any of you?

“Those of you that have will understand where I’m coming from. If you haven’t, do yourself a favour because it is pretty comical.

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“Anyone that believes that Athens is in Germany… that’s a start. [That] Oliver Twist is a season of the year, and America is a city, it doesn’t really bother me those comments. That’s as far as I’ll go with that one.”

Performative, cruel and bullying, this was not the behaviour becoming of an Australia captain. Smith should be ashamed of himself.

But it tells you two things. One, he is still extremely touchy about the ball-tampering scandal. And two, he must have spent a fair amount of his own time, presumably taking notes, watching the YouTube clip of Panesar’s cringe-worthy Mastermind appearance six years ago to ensure he was at least accurate about the former spinner’s terrible answers. Did he have nothing better to do before an Ashes series?

Another awkward point is that this is the kind of behaviour Australia indulged in before their toxic team culture was cleansed by the shame of “Sandpapergate”.

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This is exactly what they did during the 2017-18 Ashes when the local media and the team worked together to release the non-story about Jonny Bairstow’s “headbutt” of Bancroft in a Perth bar weeks earlier. Planted questions in the press conference that followed the first Test in Brisbane led to a laughing Smith and Bancroft basically taking the proverbial out of England, who were stitched up so royally they felt forced to impose a night-time curfew on the players that remained in place until 2022.

This, of course, was all in the past until Smith unwisely chose to target Panesar. It reflects badly not only on him but the whole culture of this current Australia team.

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