PERTH, Australia — A mischievous needle from stand-in skipper Steve Smith has turned an otherwise uneventful team announcement into a stinging slapdown of Monty Panesar after England’s former spinner delivered a public stoush to distract them on the morning Australia named their XI for the Ashes opener at Perth Stadium. The 36-year-old took his pre-Test press conference as an opportunity to bat back Panesar’s sandpaper sledge with not so much good humour as deliberate humour, Thursday, November 20, 2025.
Asked about Panesar’s plea for England players and fans to “make him feel guilty” over the scandal, Smith went “off topic” as he remember Panesar appeared on quiz show The Weakest Link in 2011 with an error-strewn performance, told reporters to look up how he behaved during a section of it before mocking some of his answers in what he claimed is roughly translated from Australian as “pretty comical” pre-Ashes jesting. The interaction elicited chuckles in the room but went global almost immediately as clips of his retort did the rounds online and on sports bulletins.
Panesar had thrown a hand grenade earlier in the week by telling Indian media that England should “bring Sandpapergate up again” and “make him feel guilty” to rattle Smith’s state of mind, insisting that if Australian megaphones were pointing accusing fingers at visiting players, they would be routinely described as “cheaters”. Those comments were quickly circulated and ensured Smith’s history would be an issue before a ball had been bowled.
Smith’s fragility is perhaps inevitable given how seismic the consequences of Newlands in March 2018 were, when cameras captured Cameron Bancroft applying an abrasive substance to the ball and cascades ensued in which Smith was served a one-year ban (Warner too) and stripped of captaincy privileges. Cricket Australia’s sanctions were unprecedented and turned “Sandpapergate” into a national debacle that reshaped the public image of Australian cricket.
In the years since, Smith has copped it around the world, including when he walked out to bat during last summer’s Ashes in England and spectators waved sheets of sandpaper at him as he made his way to the middle — a remark on how reputation ran just as far with his suspension. Australian bowlers later joined forces to release a collective statement in 2021, demanding an end to any lingering innuendo about the affair and that only three players knew what was happening , urging critics to move on.
Panesar similarly escaped rebuke in 2019, his street cred slightly lighter again after he went viral appearing on Celebrity Mastermind; snippets of him making a bollocks of geography and literature have become the bread and butter of British tabloid round-ups featuring quiz-show howlers, including collections of classic Mastermind cock-ups — footage that proved invaluable source material for Smith’s recent Mastermind zinger.
The reaction in England was predictably immediate, with social media quickly filling up with posts suggesting that Smith was “definitely rattled” and parroting the lines he had coached himself to deliver as proof that Panesar’s barbs had struck their mark — despite Smith’s claims at a news conference some time later that he didn’t much mind what Panesar thought, “he doesn’t really bother me.” Fans and pundits claimed that dredging up a six-year-old scandal had worked on Australia’s captain before a ball of the series had even been bowled.
AussieXICricketAustralia v England cricketSmith’s Damaging Australia are set to contest the game with a combined 31 years of debutants – Jake Weatherald and Brendan Doggett will earn their baggy green caps in an XI that will also be lacking regular skipper Pat Cummins, whose side strain has removed him from contention, along with fellow quick Josh Hazlewood. Marnus Labuschagne is pushed back up to No. 3 and Cameron Green goes down to No. 6 in a rejigged batting order that, as one Guardian analysis pointed out, also mixes experienced Ashes hands with late-blooming rookies.
The start of the four-Test series in Perth also signals a break with more than 40 years of Brisbane’s Gabba hosting the opening game of an Australian summer, a change that was ratified when the schedule for the 2025-26 Ashes awarded the opening rights to Optus Stadium. Wisden mentioned that Perth’s quick, bouncy surface and prime-time TV slot were key to the switch, which only adds a sneaky layer of intrigue to the first Test of the series.
England, skippered by Ben Stokes under head coach Brendon McCullum, on a trip that sees two and three matches scheduled for January next year, but one win in Australia in a Test series since 2011 and none since Andrew Strauss’s team lifted the urn in early 2010-11, know the scale of what they are up against across five Tests. Their hopes depend on whether an aggressive batting approach can hold up against Australia’s battery of quicks on traditionally bowler-friendly tracks.
For Smith, the Mastermind jibe was a brash reminder both of his status as a lightning rod in Ashes cricket and an attempt to gain some psychological ground even while the first ball of Friday’s opener on Nov 21 2025 is yet to be bowled. How he receives the visit of England’s sledging after Sandpapergate, and whether Panesar’s words are more elevated than his quiz-show blunders, might be as informative as how he plays against England’s attack.
