Graeme Smith has a habit of achieving most things he sets his sights on and he remains as determined as ever to feature prominently in South Africa’s one-day team. It would take a brave if not reckless gambler to bet against him doing exactly that between now and the 2015 World Cup.
Smith’s exit strategy from the captaincy was meticulously planned and his continued presence in the team as a senior player would have been welcomed by the country’s supporters had the team not been ignominiously knocked out by New Zealand in the World Cup quarterfinals in March last year. But his failure to return to South Africa with the rest of the team gave his detractors all the ammunition they needed.
His public apology a couple of months later appears to have done little to assuage the antipathy towards him. Only runs, and lots of them, can do that. Smith admits that giving up the captaincy had a greater impact on him than he imagined it would, but believes he has now come to terms with his new status, is enjoying it and is set to cash in.
“It’s been a unique challenge after stepping down from the captaincy, but not in the way some people might think. I don’t regret it for a moment, but it hasn’t been easy to find the right mental state to perform because the captaincy was so tied up with my motivation to perform. It’s all I ever knew until now,” Smith said, after missing the second ODI through injury.
“The captaincy was my driving force for so long and I needed to find the right balance between not being captain and being a bit too ‘relaxed’,” said Smith, aware that the word doesn’t quite describe his new approach. The trademark passion has never left his game, it’s just that now it’s — different.
His enthusiasm for the game led him to try to play through the pain barrier in the first ODI in Wellington, having been hit a vicious blow on the right forearm by a Morné Morkel lifter the day before.
“It was another case of head versus heart and I didn’t listen to my head. I probably let myself down by playing,” Smith admitted.
Playing through the pain barrier is one of the characteristics of Smith’s career. He could barely walk the day before the famous Edgbaston Test match in 2008 when he played one of the greatest innings of all time – his unbeaten 154 in the fourth innings wrapping up a famous series win. And then, of course, there was the Sydney broken hand innings six months later.
Talk of how long he intends to carry on playing bemuses him: “I seem to be put in the same bracket as Jakes [Jacques Kallis] and Bouch [Mark Boucher] who are 36 and 35 respectively – probably because I’ve played for 10 years and captained for nine of them, but the fact is I’ve only just turned 31 and I feel like I’ve got a good few years left in me. Actually, I believe I could be heading for the best part of my career in terms of enjoyment, but also volume of runs,” Smith said.
“I’m excited to be a part of the team with Gary [Kirsten] as coach and AB [de Villiers] as captain, to watch AB grow in the role and hopefully be an asset to him in the shorter formats of the game,” Smith said, before suggesting that his days in the shortest format may be numbered.
“It is increasingly difficult to play all three. I believe we’ve got it right in the way we are using T20 to launch new players and introduce them to international cricket. Just look at the impact Richard Levi and Marchant de Lange made here.”
Smith believes De Villiers will blossom in the environment of calm experience provided by Kirsten, Paddy Upton and Allan Donald and is happily buying into the environment of flexibility and, to a degree, experimentation encouraged by the new captain and coach.
“AB is spontaneous and he is getting better by the game, literally. I always said to him that his best asset, apart from the amount of cricket he has played, will be the management team he has around him. They can offload a lot of pressure from him and allow him to concentrate on team tactics and his own game,” Smith said.
As far as flexibility in the batting order is concerned, Smith has never given a thought to moving down the order as Kirsten did towards the end of his career. “Gary probably went a bit loopy after 10 years facing the new ball – it’s also been 10 years for me, so I know what it feels like. But no, I’ve never considered that. This was always going to be the start of a new chapter for me, but not that radical.”
So is there an end of the road in sight, as there was to his ODI captaincy? Is there another exit strategy being planned in the years ahead?
“Last year’s World Cup was a very tough way to finish it. But I always wanted this phase of my career to be one where I could really try to maximise my ability. I’m as hungry as ever to play. I would love to be there for the next World Cup.
“I know a lot can happen in three years so I don’t take anything for granted, but I still feel that I have a lot to offer this team — not just as an experienced senior player but as a batsman. But that’s up to me — I need to score the runs I’m capable of and make sure my performances merit my place in the team.”