Australia would have surely given up on their hopes of winning the upcoming Ashes if their talismanic skipper Steven Smith had been lured away by ‘a lot of money’ to play for their eternal rivals, England.
Well, autobiographies have always been the source of some exciting and never-known-before facts and Smith’s newly-released autobiography ‘The Journey’ is not an exception either.
Among many interesting tales that Smith has revealed in his book, one is how he turned down a lucrative offer from Surrey to realise his dream of playing for Australia. With his mother being English, the Australia skipper holds dual-citizenship and also played for Surrey as an 18-year-old. During his teenage days, the 28-year also dropped out school to focus solely on his game and garnered attention from several English county teams.
Eventually, he was roped in by Surrey and went on to put up some impressive performances for the second XI. Impressed by his displays, Surrey soon offered him a lucrative £30,000-a-year deal only to see the teenager refusing to sign a contract and instead sign a contract with New South Wales for much less.
“It was a lot of money to potentially throw away as an 18-year-old, and I’d never conceived of such a large amount in my life. If it had been about money, then it would have been no contest. Surrey was offering me a three-year deal worth around £30,000 per year while my first rookie contract with Cricket NSW netted me around AUD$12,000,” Smith wrote.
“I had to decide whether I wanted to press on with the ambition to play for New South Wales and, ultimately, Australia, or throw in my lot with English county side Surrey and pursue the possibility of playing international cricket for England,” he added.
Smith also revealed there was a possibility of him representing New Zealand when his parents moved to that country when he was just a toddler.
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“There’s also a New Zealand connection in our lives, as we moved to Torbay near Auckland when I was one,” he wrote. “Dad managed a sales office there for Dussek Campbell, the company created by the merger of Campbell Technical Waxes and Dussek Brothers. You could say that had things turned out. Differently, I could just as easily have been playing for New Zealand as Australia,” he added.
Well, it is a thing of the past now, and Smith has now transformed himself as the most sought-after batsman not only in Australia but also in the whole world. The right-handed batsman is currently gearing up for the upcoming five-Test series against England, starting November 23 in Brisbane.