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A second chance
For a long time, it was the top of the world, or very near to it. Then came the downfall from pushing things too far and allowed to get away with them too long. The fall was quick and brutal: a long year in the purgatory of ignominious banishment from the green playing fields of cricketing combat for Steven Smith.
As falls go, it was overdue, if only to restore some restraint and class back to the game; a gentleman’s game played in whites that had lost its purity and some of its pristine history. Steve Smith, captain of Australia, and Australian cricket exemplifying that dark side of doing anything to gain a sharp edge, which pierced many an opponent, and left many a scar.
Dismissed captain Smith languished in his private agony for that year–an eternity for any sportsman–with his shame, pain, and loss of face. Other than for a rare departure (or two) adversaries, including the press, were sympathetic, mainly kind. It is the muted, classy brotherhood of bat and ball. Now only if he would get a second chance…
The big chance came in England on the biggest stages. The belligerents came, too. The higher ground was theirs; there was determination to grind this onetime tormentor, Smith, now laid low, through grinding him face-first into the dust, if only to heighten his fall from grace. Payback, it is said, is one raging Fury. She fights dirty.
But second chances are worth fighting for, if merely to justify the returning, to take rightful place among peers, and to rebuild the narrative to a better place. This is what comes with the opportunity of redemption, through the resonance and beauty of second chances, and the power of deep personal commitment to make things right.
So far, Steven Smith, the man has done so, with humility and serenity. Steven Smith, the cricketer, has risen to the challenge in the best way he knows, by letting his bat be a part of his restoration; a string of impressive scores in the ODIs on the current Ashes tour.
In the tests, it has been a hundred here, a hundred there at Edgbaston; and at the storeyed Lord’s ground, the mecca of them all, he was well on his way to a third, when he ran into a supersonic missile.
Actually, in this field where long-ago legends still live and newer ones are born, it was a missile that zeroed in on him in the form of a fellow named Archer.
Does he have the velocity, range and aim of an ICBM! Already Joffra Archer from Sussex, by way of Bridgetown, is being whispered in the same breath as Holding and Marshall for balletic grace and red ball fearsomeness respectively. Time will tell.
But up to this time, Smith, though not pretty to watch (especially for regional fans of the game) has been the personification of stoic grit, lacking in flair and spectacle, while turning over the scoreboard. At Lord’s the fairytale grasping of the second chance offered was shattered in the most frightening manner by the sledgehammer called Archer.
A hammering and bruising it was; a falling and retreating, too.
Steven Smith will be back: battered, but not broken. This is what comes from rising out of the ashes and beginning to live again. It is the healing, reinvigorating electricity of returning from the dead, after being condemned to death, and given up for dead.
All of the cricketing world should welcome back Steven Smith. Guyanese of all ages, and in every field of endeavor, could learn a thing or two from taking full advantage of second leases on life. They don’t come frequently.
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