Steve Smith's Ashes Future in Doubt as He Eyes T20 and Olympics

Steve Smith has spent a decade tormenting bowlers in whites, but the next great Australian Ashes heist in England may unfold without him.

The 37-year-old, the most prolific Australian batter since Ricky Ponting and still the class act in the current Test side, has admitted he might not be around for next year’s Ashes in the UK as his career tilts decisively towards Twenty20 cricket.

Smith’s record in the long game remains staggering.
An average of 56.00 from 125 Tests.
Fourth on Australia’s all-time run-scorers list.

He sits just eight runs shy of Steve Waugh, who needed 168 matches to build his tally. One decent stroke in his next Test, and Smith will slip past a giant of the game into outright third.

Yet the man who has so often looked ageless at the crease is openly treating his Test future as a short-term proposition.

Ashes dream that may never be fulfilled

Smith has never won a Test series in England. For many of Australia’s veterans, that unfinished business has been the great lure pulling them towards one last campaign in 2025.

He isn’t so sure.

“I don’t even know if I’ll be there yet,” he told the UK Telegraph, a line that will have raised eyebrows from Sydney to Lord’s.

“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.

“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.

“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.”

For a player so central to Australia’s modern Test identity, the idea of an Ashes tour without Smith underlines how quickly this era could fracture.

While Mitchell Starc has publicly doubled down on his commitment to red-ball cricket, others are drifting towards the white-ball circuit, where the schedule is lighter and the pay packets heavier.

Smith insists money is not the driver. The new obsession is different, and very specific.

Eyes on LA, not Lord’s

The next big target is not another Boxing Day hundred or a final Ashes epic. It’s the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Cricket’s return to the Games has lit a fresh spark. Smith will be 39 by then, hardly a guarantee in a format that rarely tolerates ageing legs and slowing reactions. He knows that. Which is why he’s throwing himself into T20 cricket with unusual intensity at this stage of his career.

“Right now probably it’s just the Olympics, to try to be a part of that,” he said when asked about what still drives him.

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

“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.”

He is currently in Dublin, turning out for Amsterdam Flames in the European T20 Premier League. It is hardly the traditional path for a modern Australian great, but it fits his new reality: more T20 overs, more short-form nuance, more time in the middle in a format he wants to master again.

For the Flames and the league’s emerging cricketers, it is an extraordinary resource. For Australia’s Test side, it is a reminder that their best batter is no longer structuring his life around the five-day game.

Return to South Africa

Before any final decision on the Ashes, there is another emotionally loaded chapter looming.

Smith’s next assignment in national colours will be with the Test side in South Africa next month. It will be Australia’s first visit there since the 2018 ball-tampering scandal, the sandpaper saga that reshaped careers and reputations and led to bans for Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft.

The return will carry its own weight. Different captain, different dynamics, same ghosts.

Smith, now in the twilight of a glittering Test career, walks back into the country where everything once fell apart, while quietly plotting a future that might no longer revolve around baggy greens and English summers.

If this is the beginning of the end for Steve Smith the Test titan, he seems determined to script the final act on his terms — whether that’s chasing Olympic gold in LA or finally, perhaps from afar, watching someone else try to conquer England.