Steve Smith will always be known as a cheat: Monty Panesar

Steve Smith has been phenomenal in the Ashes series with the bat and has turned out to be the chief architect in bringing Australia on the brink of winning the urn on English soil. He has tormented the English bowlers throughout the tournament, who have remained unsuccessful in getting his wicket early.

England is currently lagging the series by 2-1 whereas there is only 1 Test match to go and now their ex-players have come out with some ridiculous statements over the former Australian captain.

Last year, Smith and David Warner were slapped with a ban of 12 months after getting caught in the ball-tampering scandal while they were touring South Africa. But the strong comeback from him has kept his haters in awe. Everyone around the globe has accepted and praised Smith’s return to international cricket but it looks like a couple of English players are not able to digest it.

After English pacer, Steve Harmison commented over former Australian captain saying that Smith will always be known as a cheat until the end of his cricketing career irrespective of his achievements on the field, former English spinner Monty Panesar compared Steve’s ball-tampering involvement with the incident of Diego Maradona’s hand goal during the 1986 football World Cup.

In an exclusive interview given to TOI, when Panesar was asked about, his take on Steve Smith comeback, he said “He is back and doing what he always loves to do. He is batting well and scoring runs. We all have heard of great (Diego) Maradona and his hand goal (hand of God) in the World Cup. People remember him because of that goal. He will always be known as a cheat, despite scoring the huge number of runs.”

Currently, Smith is the leading scorer in Ashes with 671 runs in 5 innings he has played, 82 being his lowest throughout the series. After wearing the whites for Australia after a long gap of 12 years, he reclaimed the number 1 position in ICC Test rankings leaving the Indian skipper Virat Kohli behind. Smith extended the lead by 34 points for the top spot.

~ Written by Jasvinder Singh