Steve Smith has spent a decade tormenting bowlers in whites. Now he’s openly wondering whether he’ll still be wearing them by the time the Ashes roll back around.
The 37-year-old, Australia’s premier Test batter and the country’s finest since Ricky Ponting, has hinted he may not make it to next year’s series in England as his career tilts towards the shortest form of the game.
Smith’s record in Test cricket remains towering. An average of 56.00 from 125 matches. Fourth on Australia’s all-time run-scoring list. Just eight runs shy of Steve Waugh’s tally, despite Waugh playing 43 more Tests. One more decent innings and he steps onto the podium of Australian greats.
Yet the man himself sounds increasingly like someone edging towards the exit.
In an interview with the UK Telegraph, the Sydneysider admitted he might walk away from the format before Australia return to England in the middle of next year — a tour that has long loomed as unfinished business for him.
“I don’t even know if I’ll be there yet,” Smith said. “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.
“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.”
A “good ride” is an understatement. Smith has carried Australia through eras, rebuilt his reputation after scandal, and remained the most reliable run machine in the Test side. But the cricketing world he dominates has changed shape around him.
Where some, like Mitchell Starc, have doubled down on the prestige and grind of Test cricket, more and more senior players are drifting towards the global T20 circuit and the financial security it offers.
Smith insists this is not a cash grab. His motivation now is a different stage entirely: the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
By then he will be 39. There is no guarantee he will still be in Australia’s best T20 XI, no certainty he will even be in the selection conversation. He knows that. It hasn’t stopped him from throwing himself into the format.
He is currently in Dublin, turning out for Amsterdam Flames in the European T20 Premier League, chasing overs, rhythm and opportunity.
“Right now probably it’s just the Olympics, to try to be a part of that,” Smith said when asked about his remaining goals.
“One of the reasons why I wanted to play with Amsterdam here was just to continue playing as much T20 cricket as I can.
“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.”
This is the duality of Smith’s late career. On one hand, still the bedrock of Australia’s Test batting. On the other, a veteran chasing a place at an Olympics, experimenting in new leagues, sharing wisdom in unfamiliar dressing rooms.
And yet his next assignment for Australia brings him back to where one of the darkest chapters of his career began.
Next month, Smith will return with the Test side to South Africa, the first time he and several teammates have toured there since the 2018 ball-tampering scandal that led to bans for then-captain Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft.
The last time he walked off a Test ground in South Africa, his career looked broken. This time, he arrives as a rehabilitated great, still the most dependable batter in the side, but with the clock ticking a little louder.
Whether that clock runs down before one last crack at the Ashes in England is now the question hanging over the back end of his remarkable career.
