Considering that Steve Smith was once observed changing gloves after facing eight balls, it is no surprise to see him throw down a gauntlet. The surprise is that he is doing so in 20-over cricket, the format where his batting has historically made the most modest impression.
It is an incongruity of Australia’s season that Smith has the hottest hand in the Big Bash League and it is too late to have him considered for an imminent World Cup with the squad selected weeks ago. Smith wanted to be there, but his bigger concern is not the T20 World Cup of 2026. It’s the Los Angeles Olympics of 2028.
Another 65 off 43 balls on Friday sent his Sydney Sixers into the Big Bash final, an innings punctuated by leg-side launches and carves behind point. It was his fifth short-form knock after the Ashes: fresh from a Test century at the SCG, he began his T20 tournament with an unbeaten 19 in a washout, then freight-trained 100 from 41 in the cross-town derby. Next came 54 against Brisbane and while 37 in Perth does not jump off the page it was in a Sixers collapse as pace leapt off a spicy wicket. Smith was the only player who looked at ease and by the time he became the sixth wicket to fall his score was half of the team’s.
Those five hits have yielded 275 runs at 68, with the chance to shoot for a trophy if he can take down Perth in the Scorchers’ den. It’s a fun moment, but does it have to mean something more? Australian cricket audiences love a kneejerk reaction and as early as Smith’s century plenty were taking the position that the selectors had made the wrong call for the World Cup.
That isn’t really borne out by fact. Big Bash runs at the SCG aren’t World Cup runs in Delhi. Smacking Ryan Hadley and Wes Agar against Sydney Thunder is not the same as taking down Jasprit Bumrah and Kuldeep Yadav against India.
When Smith was phased out of the T20 team nearly two years ago, the call made sense. The shortest format was never his best: his first Australia gig was in that team as a bits-and-pieces player in 2010, but he had dominated only briefly around 2016, at the peak of his Test powers. His record remains middle of the T20 pack. Smith for 20 overs seemed a waste. Heaving for the rope, his level of skill was debased by a lottery format.
By 2024, he was into his mid 30s, his Test returns had declined and had the appearance of a player approaching the end. His status got him one more T20 chance, opening the batting per his request on a tour of New Zealand, but a couple more low scores led Australia to pair Travis Head with David Warner, and later with Mitchell Marsh. The combinations worked.
That remains the case. There is no spot at the top. The middle order pits Smith’s IPL strike rate of 128, or his international rate of 125, against the power of Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis and Cameron Green. Smith is a better cricketer than Tim David, yes, but can he hit as many sixes from 10 balls?
And yet, and yet. Barring a twist, Smith won’t be at the World Cup, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be part of T20 assignments to follow. What looked like a fade-out in 2024 has reversed, Smith nailing five hundreds in his past 12 Tests with rejuvenated purpose. Can that spill into his white-ball cricket again, as it previously did at his best? Does his rush of runs reflect that or just anomalous luck?
Whatever the Big Bash’s limitations, Smith will throw himself into more domestic opportunities, already linked to America’s Major League, England’s Hundred and the new European league proposed for September. He has retired from one-day internationals to hone the shortest form. He is doing gym routines to build up six-hitting power. There is still the sense this is beneath him, but even Salvador Dalí did Alka-Seltzer commercials.
Smith’s motivation goes beyond fun and profit. It is that dream of winning an Olympic medal, of participating in an aspect of sporting life that has never been part of his. If that were to happen, the limitations of the format would be lost in a metallic glow. The dream is distant, two-and-a-half more years of not just maintaining the standard, but raising it enough to take back a spot.
Most batters in their late 30s find the end comes quickly. But if Australia’s singular modern great is still around, and still scoring, what selectors would dare leave him off the trip?
Smith has dozens of pairs of gloves in his kit; during long innings we see their ranks lined up by the boundary to dry in the sun. If he makes another score on Sunday in taking the Sixers to a title via the toughest road trip in the business it will be a final gauntlet in this summer’s sequence, placed neatly with the others to end the line.
