Come on then, who had ‘an episode of Celebrity Mastermind from 2019’ on their bingo card as the hot topic of discussion ahead of the upcoming Ashes series?
It was certainly one of the more unexpected strands to emerge from a press conference given by Steve Smith, standing in as Australia captain while Pat Cummins nurses a back injury, the day before the first Test starts in Perth.
Earlier this month, former England bowler Monty Panesar had told an obscure UK betting site called AceOdds that the current side should try to get into Smith’s head by bringing up ‘Sandpaper Gate’. Panesar’s contention was that rehashing the incident from 2018 when, under Smith’s captaincy, Australia were caught trying to tamper with the ball using some sandpaper stashed in batter Cameron Bancroft’s trousers, would give them a psychological edge in the matches ahead.
Smith was sacked as captain, as was David Warner as vice-captain, and both were suspended for a year.
“Really get into him (Smith) and make him feel guilty about it,” was Panesar’s advice. “Make him feel like, ‘They’re probably right, I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be doing this’.”
The line was picked up by a few of the more excitable Australian outlets at the time, but broadly ignored. Until, that is, Smith’s press conference before the opening Ashes Test in Perth, which starts on Friday. And he had a remarkably well-prepared answer to an ostensibly random question.
“I’m going to go off-topic for a second here,” said Smith. “Who of you in the room has seen Mastermind and Monty Panesar on that? Any of you?
“For those of you who have, you’ll understand where I’m coming from, and those of you who haven’t, do yourself a favour, because it’s pretty comical. Anyone that believes that Athens is in Germany… that’s a start. Oliver Twist is a season of the year? And America is a city?
“Doesn’t really bother me, those comments (from Panesar), so that’s as far as I’ll go with that one.”
Steve Smith addresses the media at Perth Stadium on Thursday (Robbie Stephenson/PA Images via Getty Images)
For those unversed in such things, Smith was referring to Panesar’s 2019 appearance on a celebrity edition of long-running British quiz show Mastermind, in which he gave a series of wildly incorrect and eccentric answers in the general knowledge round, after doing OK on the history of Sikhism as his specialist subject (Panesar is Sikh).
If you want to watch it, you’re welcome to seek it out, but if someone freezing under pressure and making themselves look quite silly on national TV makes you uncomfortable, it’s best to avoid it.
It seems to have been a topic of discussion among Australian players for a while. Because the internet never forgets, we know that his former team-mate Glenn Maxwell flagged it to Smith on X, then Twitter, at the time.
— Glenn Maxwell (@Gmaxi_32) January 11, 2019
A couple of things occur here.
Firstly, taken on face value, it’s a classic case of the ‘Play the man, not the ball’ approach to answering questions. In other words, don’t address the message, attempt to discredit the messenger. In this case, the logic seems to be, ‘I won’t address a semi-relevant issue because a man did badly on a quiz show’.
It calls to mind the story from bowler-turned-analyst Simon Hughes about an argument he had with Ian Botham over the pronunciation of ‘dolcelatte’, which is a type of Italian cheese. Hughes corrected Botham, to which the former England captain, epochal all-rounder and taker of 383 Test wickets, apparently retorted: “Oh yeah, well how many Test wickets did you take?”
Secondly, it is worth pointing out that saying “doesn’t really bother me” after giving a detailed rundown of a semi-obscure quiz show appearance from more than six years ago isn’t the most convincing way to insist that something doesn’t bother you.
But mostly, the question that springs to mind is: why? Why bother? What is being achieved here?
The logical response would have been to ignore such a question. Journalists receive dozens of quotes like this every week, unsolicited emails from public-relations or betting companies dropping into your inbox, featuring former players casting forth on Topical Issue X, Y or Z with varying degrees of relevance. Panesar’s line was on the edgier end of irrelevance, but a vaguely punchy quote given to a betting website over a week ago by a cricketer who last played a Test match in 2013 is not something that should really concern the captain of Australia the day before a colossal series starts.
Monty Panesar bowling for England on the 2006-07 tour of Australia (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Smith was undoubtedly punching down on Panesar, but it’s difficult to get too worked up about it from a moral standpoint. Panesar has spoken about the Mastermind appearance since with good humour, and doesn’t appear too bothered about it.
More relevantly, it’s just weird.
Smith is about to captain Australia in an Ashes Test, so why is he entertaining a question like this? Is he playing to the gallery, to some excitable elements of the Australian media, who have responded with headlines such as ‘Smith eviscerates Panesar’, like it’s a clickbait YouTube video of a comedian hitting back at a heckler? Is that what we’re doing now?
It brought to mind another Smith press conference, from the 2017-18 Ashes, when he and Bancroft brought up an incident in a Perth bar when England player Jonny Bairstow had apparently gently headbutted Bancroft, as a slightly odd form of greeting. Smith and Bancroft couldn’t stop giggling at the recollection, something that annoyed the English team at the time, and you can certainly argue that it was poor form to publicise something that happened away from the field of play.
But at least on that occasion it was relevant because it was about somebody actually involved in that series. Whether you think it was acceptable or not, it might at least have served a purpose: the story became public because the TV microphones caught the Australian players sledging Bairstow about the incident during the first Test of that series, shortly after which he played a poor shot and was out.
Sledging, or ‘mental disintegration’, or trash talk, has been part of cricket and indeed sport since God was a boy, and in the internal morality of those worlds, it is generally considered acceptable. And on that occasion, the Australians could argue that it worked nicely: hooting about it in a press conference perhaps stepped over the line, but ultimately that doesn’t matter much. Job done, game won, onto the next one.
Cameron Bancroft and Steve Smith at their press conference in November 2017 (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Here, it’s someone who shouldn’t be on Smith’s radar. Panesar last played in a Test match more than a decade ago. He has only appeared a handful of times alongside any of the current England team, none of whom is likely to be rattled by a jibe like this.
Is this Smith’s contribution to the ‘content’ industrial complex? It’s all over TikTok, apparently. Great engagement.
Is it just fun? A laugh? A banter? Is this all very funny and I have completely lost my sense of humour in the fug of an impending Ashes series? Fair enough, everyone finds joy in different things, but it’s hard not to keep coming back to that one question.
Why bother?