Steven Smith keeps smashing Big Bash attacks, yet his route back into Australia’s T20 side remains blocked. A 42-ball century against Sydney Thunder and a more measured 54 versus Brisbane Heat have lifted Sydney Sixers into this season’s Qualifier, but national selectors appear settled on their World Cup batting order.
Mitchell Marsh and Travis Head, in Bailey’s words, are “locked in at the top of the order”. The provisional squad for June’s tournament in the USA and the Caribbean is already on paper; it can be changed up to 31 January, though only injury seems likely to prompt a rethink.
“It’s a great problem to have, isn’t it?” chair of selectors George Bailey said. “He’s playing incredibly well, as he has done in the BBL for the last couple of years, in a position that we’ve got really good coverage in. But if there were moving parts and something was required around there, no doubt his name would be in the mix.”
Smith is 35 now and has not played a T20I since early 2024. He retired from ODIs last year but left the shortest format open, mainly because he would love to be in Los Angeles when cricket returns to the Olympics in 2028. By then he will be 39, an age when reflexes can fade yet experience counts for plenty.
“I always want to play for Australia in big tournaments,” he said after the Heat game. “But I think that ship’s sailed. I reckon they’ve got two opening batters that are doing pretty well. I’m relaxed doing what I can here and having some fun.
“My main goal, as I’ve said before, is to get in the team when the Olympics is rolling around. I’d be keen to do that. That’d be pretty cool. Keep doing what I’m doing and you never know.”
Form alone is not the issue. Since his last international outing, Smith has averaged 51.18 across domestic T20s – including a stint in the Hundred – and scored at 156 runs per hundred balls. Five BBL knocks in that period have produced two centuries and two fifties. All four of his Big Bash tons have come as an opener, the role he now craves, even though most of his 65 T20Is were spent anchoring at three or four with a career strike-rate of 125.45.
“I’ve played some different roles,” he said. “A lot of the time when I was playing, I was the guy that had to stick it together in the middle. If there were a couple of early wickets I’d have to be the one to rebuild. I wasn’t always the go out and play freely kind of player. It was a different kind of role. Since opening the batting, it gives me an opportunity to just be free from ball one, see it as I see it and take it on and have some fun out there.”
Bailey does not entirely rule out a lower-order option should Australia’s plans change. “I’d hate to put a line through saying that Steve couldn’t bat anywhere else, because I think he’s proven us wrong, or he’s proved his ability to be able to do that on a number of occasions,” he said. “I think when he’s had international opportunities of late, it has been at the top. Certainly, his most recent ones have been. He’s played a lot of international T20 cricket. Clearly, when he goes back to the Big Bash, he is a level above.”
So where does that leave him? Realistically on the outside looking in for June, content to entertain domestic crowds and hopeful that selectors will remember those fireworks when the 2028 squad is pencilled in. A World Cup recall may feel distant, but an Olympic cap – once a wild fantasy for cricketers – is now four years away and, in Smith’s mind, worth chasing.
