Steven Smith: A Sudden Fall from Grace

He was scoring centuries, one after the other, just a short while ago. His average in Test matches was constantly and exponentially rising since last 4 years in a row. He was ahead of present day run-machines like Virat Kohli, Joe Root and Ken Williamson. But today, one finds him in complete disarray. Steven Smith has travelled a full circle in his career, it seems.

Steve Smith broke down into tears at a press conference in Sydney, after he got banned for 12 months from international cricket.

I would call him "a man of surprizes". Before 4-5 years he was considered as an ordinary off-break bowler, who can bat a bit. Then he surprised one and all by his masterly batting skills. His batting achievements kept on increasing and his fame kept on rising. He accumulated huge amounts of runs allover the world, be it an Ashes series, a series against tough rivals India or against modern-day minnows like West Indies. Scoring a Test Hundred had become as easy as counting 1,2,3 to him, which gets reflected in his incredibly humongous test batting record which has an average of 63 and 23 test hundreds in just 65 test matches!!! But then came this unexpected downfall. 

In the 3rd test match at Capetown, South Africa, he and a couple of his team-mates were caught red-handed 'cheating'. They were tampering the red cricket ball to make it reverse swing, a type of fast bowling, which would make life difficult for the opposition team batsmen. Once it was established that Smith and Warner were the two main culprits, Cricket Australia yesterday have banned them from participating in any form of the game, for the next 1 year. Bancroft, the opening batsman who aided in cheating, has been banned for 9 months. 

This ball tampering scandal comes as a severe jolt to Australian cricket in particular and world cricket in general. I mean, who would have contemplated even in their wildest dreams that one day this highly talented, very high class and genius batsman, Steven Smith would get involved in such a defaming, mean and humiliating act??!? I myself, am a huge fan of him, am severely disappointed for what he has just done and so would be his millions of fans around the globe. For a batsman of such a high calibre, this is nothing else but "a Sudden fall from Grace". Let us hope that Smith gradually recovers from this unbelievable phase of public humiliation, overcomes it thoroughly, learns perhaps the biggest lesson of his life and then returns back with flying colors into international cricket next year. - (kb/29-03-2018/3)