With Sussex in the lead to sign the Australia batter on a short-term deal for the start of the 2023 season, Steven Smith is getting closer to a County Championship deal.
According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday, Smith is most likely to end up in Hove after spending the previous few months in negotiations with county sides regarding a potential stint of “three or four games.”
According to ESPNcricinfo, Smith was hoping to sign with a club in Division One. Kent was considered the ideal fit given his ties to the county as a result of his time playing club cricket for Sevenoaks Vine CC in 2007 and subsequent appearance for the second team at Canterbury.
The club’s circumstance and Smith’s availability did not coincide, though. Division Two team Sussex has yet to offer a contract, but that is expected to change in the upcoming week.
Prior to Australia’s likely participation in the World Test Championship final at the Kia Oval in June and the ensuing Ashes series, which gets underway at Edgbaston on June 16, the short-term contract would enable Smith to adapt to English conditions.
The 33-year-old is skipping this year’s IPL in order to use that time to travel back to his home country following Australia’s four-Test series in India, which concludes in the middle of March.
In county cricket, this would be Smith’s first red-ball encounter, and it’s easy to see why a player of his caliber would be so appealing. He has 30 centuries in the format and an overall average of 60.89 in Test cricket, which only drops to 59.55 over the course of 16 Tests in England.
In 2010, he played five T20 games for Worcestershire, which was his previous encounter with English domestic football.
But in 2007, Smith was given the chance to carve out a long-term future for himself in English cricket when Surrey extended an offer to sign him to a full-time contract after Alan Butcher, the team’s first-team coach at the time, had noticed him.
Smith obtained his British citizenship through his mother Gillian, who was born in London. Smith played in two games for Surrey’s 2nd XI but declined the offer in order to continue his development at New South Wales.
Earlier that summer, he made one appearance for the Kent 2nd XI. Paul Farbrace, who is now the head coach at Sussex, was at the time Kent’s academy and second XI coach.
Smith’s participation in the domestic English game will cause the national team some concern because it provides crucial practice for a competitor in advance of their attempts to reclaim the Ashes. On England’s recent tour of Pakistan, Ben Stokes was confronted with a similar conundrum, and the Test captain of England struggled with his response.
“It’s good for the county game to see players of Steve’s calibre want to come over and play,”
Stokes said.
“But I don’t know. It’s one of those where you probably prefer them not to get any game time in England before the Ashes. It is what it is.”
Smith’s participation in the county circuit would have advantages on both sides, according to ECB’s performance director Mo Bobat.
“You end up being fairly split,”
“Any good player coming to our domestic system will raise the standard of it. In many ways it’s good. It’s good for our bowlers to bowl at Steve Smith. It’s good for young batters to bat with him. There is upside.
“Specifically with the Ashes. Yeah, you could say it helps him prep and that could be a disadvantage to England. I don’t spend too much time thinking about that. We just try to control what we can do.
I think, and I’m sure that Brendon and Ben would be the same, if we play to our potential we know we are a match for anyone and can beat anyone, the way we are playing our cricket. We will focus on that.
“At times it’s disappointing that our players aren’t afforded the same opportunities overseas,”
Bobat added.
“I’d love to get more of our players in first-class cricket overseas. It’s notoriously difficult.
It’s not particularly easy in Australia, can’t really do it in India, we’ve done it at times before in Sri Lanka. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it would be nice if our players could sample a bit of that in red-ball cricket. It’s not easy, though.”
Smith would take Jayden Seales’ place at Sussex if he were to sign there. Along with Indian batter Cheteshwar Pujara, the West Indian quick was supposed to be the club’s second foreign player. However, he will not be available to play at the start of the English summer because he needs surgery for a left knee injury.
Prior to Farbrace’s hiring, Sussex underwent a difficult time under the joint direction of Ian Salisbury and James Kirtley. It is believed that Sussex is also interested in signing Pakistani leg spinner Shadab Khan for the Vitality Blast and Australian all-rounder Sean Abbott on a multi-format contract.