Steve Smith's Ashes Future: A Decade of Dominance
Steve Smith has spent a decade tormenting bowlers in whites. Now he’s openly wondering whether he’ll still be wearing them when Australia next walks out for an Ashes Test in England.
At 37, the numbers remain absurd. An average of 56.00 from 125 Tests. Fourth on Australia’s all-time run-scorers list. Eight runs shy of Steve Waugh, who needed 168 matches to stack his tally. On paper, he is still the best Test batter Australia can pick.
But the paper no longer tells the full story.
Ashes dream on the clock
Smith has been flirting with the idea of Test retirement for years, his future a constant murmur around every series he plays. This time, in an interview with the UK Telegraph, he allowed the door to the endgame to swing a little wider.
“I don’t even know if I’ll be there yet,” he said when asked about next year’s Ashes in England.
That’s the Ashes he has never won away from home. The one that has driven a generation of Australian players deep into their 30s. For Smith, it remains the one great gap on a glittering Test résumé.
“I’m kind of a series-by-series proposition, as I’ve been for a while, and that’s still a fair way away for me right now,” he said. “So, yeah, I’d love to win (a series) there or to have won one there, but you wait and see if that comes to fruition.
“I’ve had a lot of fun. I’m still enjoying it, so I don’t have an end date, we’ll wait and see. But it’s been a good ride.”
Those are not the words of a man mapping out another four-year Test cycle. They’re the words of a great player feeling the pull of something different.
From red ball to Olympic rings
While Mitchell Starc and a few others have doubled down on the long format, the wider tide of modern cricket is obvious. More players, more often, are chasing the schedule, freedom and paydays of Twenty20.
Smith insists money is not his primary motivation. The next big target, he says, carries a different kind of shine: the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Cricket’s return to the Games has lit up imaginations everywhere. Smith’s included.
“Right now probably it’s just the Olympics, to try to be a part of that,” he said of his remaining goals.
If he makes it, he’ll be 39. There is no guarantee he will still be in Australia’s best T20 XI by then. He knows that. Which is why he’s chasing as many short-format overs as he can.
At the moment, that means Dublin, not Sydney or London. Smith is turning out for Amsterdam Flames in the European T20 Premier League, using the competition as both a laboratory and a launchpad.
“One of the reasons why I wanted to play with Amsterdam here was just to continue playing as much T20 cricket as I can,” he explained. “I was keen immediately to come and play in a new market and, hopefully, share some experiences with the local players and associate players: share a dressing room with them and try to impart some of my knowledge on to them. It’s been really good.”
The image of one of the game’s great technicians mentoring emerging cricketers in a fledgling league says plenty about where his mind is. He is not winding down. He is pivoting.
unfinished business and old scars
Before any Olympic dream, before any final call on the Ashes, there is a different kind of return on the calendar.
Next month, Smith will be back in Australian colours for a Test series in South Africa. It will be his first visit there since the 2018 ball-tampering scandal, the episode that reshaped his career and reputation and led to bans for Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft.
The last time he walked off a South African ground, he did so as a disgraced captain. This time, he goes back as a senior statesman, still the cornerstone of Australia’s batting, still the player teammates look to when the ball is jagging and the crowd is howling.
There is a symmetry to it. As his Test future hangs in the balance and his eyes drift toward T20 and the Olympics, he returns to the place where everything once came crashing down.
How many more such tours he has left in him remains his secret. For now, Smith keeps scoring, keeps talking in maybes, and keeps the cricket world guessing whether that next Ashes in England will be his last chase, or a dream he chooses to leave behind.
