It’s Going to Be a Long Road to Redemption for Smith and Warner

Steve Smith and David Warner have both been banned for the next 12 months for their part in the ball-tampering row.

Steve Smith was sent home to Australia on Wednesday.

(Photo: Reuters)

It doesn’t take long to lose everything we have. One moment of carelessness, stupidity and greed is enough to make one pay for the rest of our lives.

That is how the worlds of Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft – two of Australia’s highly coveted players and a promising young player respectively – turned upside down in a matter of just a couple of days. It required years of hard work to get to the place they were and all it took was yellow tape, some pitch granules, their utterly stupid brains, and most importantly, their corrupted sportsman-spirit, to lose everything they had.

Now that they have been banned – Warner and Smith for the next 12 months and Bancroft for the next nine – it's going to be an uphill climb for them from here, considering the the hits their reputations will take.

Both Smith and Warner were at the peak of their careers while Bancroft was proving himself to be a rising star. But all of those accolades they had won, all their exploits mean nothing now.

What a career it had been for Smith so far. The world considered him the second coming of Sir Don Bradman for his exploits in Test Cricket. He walked on the path of glory all throughout his career so far. But here he is with the image of a fallen figure as his path of glory is now nothing but a lonely road beside empty streets.

Warner! The man who set an example for his transformation from a player with brattish arrogance to a responsible, calm and composed man both on and off the field has been thrown back to the dark alleys once again. And he has nobody to blame for that but himself. He was one of the most popular and loved sportspersons in the country a year back. The fact that he was adjudged the winner of the Alan Border Medal in back-to-back years in 2016 and 2017 and the ‘Sports Dad of the Year’ award in 2016 testify how much love he received back home.

But all that is gone now. It is a thing of the past. And his reputation has been tarnished because of his own mistakes.

Bancroft, the new face in the Australian squad, who had sent the world into splits with his humour while describing his ‘headbutt greeting’ with Johnny Barstow in front of the media during the Ashes, the very guy who had shown that he had what it takes to grind it out in Test cricket, is now probably at the end of his career, which hadn't even flourished properly.

Sponsorships are being withdrawn, their board is against them, their countrymen are angry and indifferent, and more importantly, they are being treated as unwanted entities everywhere.

They are going through a very tough time now. And the time ahead is going to be tougher.

But they have to stay strong. Instead of spending this time in depression, thinking about undoing that act of theirs, they must concentrate on what is to come.

They must prepare themselves to rise up strong. They have to rise in such a way that the world falls in love with them once again. They have one year to look back at what they did wrong, get their heads sorted out, and make a fresh start once again, in order to get back to the very life that was taken from them.

They have to earn their lives, their respect, their reputation and everything else back from the scratch when they return. Even the world, no matter how angry and hurt they are, will wait for their return. But they have to ensure that their 2.0 versions are free from all the bad elements that ruined their lives, because the climb to the top from ‘Down Under’ is going to be steeper than they could ever imagine.