Steve Smith's Future in Cricket: Ashes and Olympics Aspirations

Steve Smith has spent a decade haunting bowlers in whites. Now he’s openly wondering whether he’ll still be wearing them when the Ashes roll around again.

At 37, the numbers remain outrageous. An average of 56.00 across 125 Tests. Fourth on Australia’s all-time run-scoring list. Eight more runs and he goes past Steve Waugh, who needed 168 matches to reach his mark. On paper, there is no urgency. On the field, he is still Australia’s premier Test batter.

Yet the clock is ticking in Smith’s mind.

Ashes dream that may never be

Speaking to the UK Telegraph, the Sydneysider admitted what Australian fans have long feared: next year’s Ashes in England is no guarantee.

“I don’t even know if I’ll be there yet,” he said. “I’m kind of a series-by-series proposition, as I’ve been for a while, and that’s still a fair way away for me right now.”

Those are not the words of a man mapping out a long farewell tour. They’re the words of someone who has made peace with the idea that the end could come quickly, even if one of his great unfinished missions remains.

Smith has never won a Test series in England. For many of Australia’s senior players, that elusive away Ashes triumph has been the ultimate carrot. For him, it might remain exactly that.

“So, yeah, I’d love to win (a series) there or to have won one there, but you wait and see if that comes to fruition,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of fun. I’m still enjoying it, so I don’t have an end date, we’ll wait and see. But it’s been a good ride.”

A good ride. From the kid who started as a leg-spinner who could bat a bit, to the man who carried a batting order and rebuilt his reputation after Cape Town, it’s an understatement of epic proportions.

Turning towards the shortest game

While Mitchell Starc has doubled down on his love for Test cricket, Smith is edging in a different direction.

This isn’t the familiar late-career cash grab. Smith has never looked or sounded like a player driven by franchise paydays. But he is clear: his focus is shifting from red-ball cricket to T20.

The reason is unusual for a player of his stature and age: the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

“Right now probably it’s just the Olympics, to try to be a part of that,” he said when asked about his remaining goals.

If cricket’s return to the Games needed a headline name to underline its significance, Smith is volunteering. He will be 39 by then. There is no guarantee he will still be in Australia’s best T20 XI. He knows that. He’s chasing it anyway.

Chasing T20 miles in Europe

To give himself a chance, Smith has gone off the traditional path. At a stage when many greats would be winding down in familiar surroundings, he is in Dublin, playing for Amsterdam Flames in the European T20 Premier League.

One of the world’s most decorated Test batters, grafting away in a fledgling competition, trying to squeeze in as many T20 games as possible.

“One of the reasons why I wanted to play with Amsterdam here was just to continue playing as much T20 cricket as I can,” he explained.

There’s another layer to it. Smith isn’t just there to hit runs.

“I was keen immediately to come and play in a new market and, hopefully, share some experiences with the local players and associate players: share a dressing room with them and try to impart some of my knowledge on to them. It’s been really good.”

The image is striking: a modern great passing on tricks of the trade in an emerging league, even as he reshapes his own game for one last big target.

Return to South Africa

Before any decision on the Ashes, before the Olympic dream gathers real pace, there is a different kind of return on the horizon.

Smith’s next assignment for Australia will be with the Test side against South Africa next month. It will be the first time he and the team have toured there since the 2018 ball-tampering scandal that changed his career and Australian cricket’s image in one brutal stroke.

Back then, he left South Africa banned, broken, and publicly humiliated. This time he goes back as a rehabilitated leader figure, still the cornerstone of the batting order, still the standard by which Australian batters are judged.

How many more such tours he has left is the question that now hangs over every series he plays.

He may yet walk out at Lord’s or The Oval one last time in the Baggy Green, chasing that missing away Ashes triumph. Or he might be gone by then, chasing rings in Los Angeles instead of urns in London.