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Australia Men's Cricket Team vs England Cricket Team Timeline: Australian stand-in skipper Steve Smith has hit back at former English spinner Monty Panesar over his remarks involving the 'sandpaper' row in the year 2018. Smith, while addressing a press conference, clamped down on Panesar in a hilarious yet harsh manner, invoking a series of laughs in the room full of journalists.

It is worth noting that Panesar had advised England to make Smith ‘feel guilty’ regarding his involvement in the 2017 controversy, which forced him to quit captaincy. In the aftermath of the ball-tampering scandal against South Africa, batters Cameron Bancroft and David Warner were slapped with a 12-month ban from playing cricket along with Smith.

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“Say something like, ‘I don’t think it’s ethical that he’s the captain, I don’t think he played the game fairly’. Really get into him and make him feel guilty about it. Make him feel like, ‘they’re probably right, I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be doing this," Panesar had said.

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When enquired about the remarks made by the former spinner during the pre-match press conference, Smith dismissed them, shooting a hilarious rebuttal at Panesar, touching upon his 2019 participation in a celebrity edition of BBC Mastermind, where he managed to answer only one question correctly.

“I'm going to go off topic here. Who of you in the room has seen Mastermind and Monty Panesar on that? Any of you? Those of you that have will understand where I'm coming from. If you haven't, do yourself a favour because it is pretty comical. Anyone who believes that Athens is in Germany, Oliver Twist is a season of the year, and America is a city, it doesn't really bother me those comments. That's as far as I'll go with that one,” Smith said. Check out the video here:

Smith received a 12-month international cricket suspension from Cricket Australia and lost the captaincy under a broader leadership ban after the Sandpapergate incident in South Africa.

“I'm going to go off topic here. Who of you in the room has seen Mastermind and Monty Panesar on that? Any of you? Those of you that have will understand where I'm coming from. If you haven't, do yourself a favour because it is pretty comical. Anyone who believes that Athens is in Germany, Oliver Twist is a season of the year, and America is a city, it doesn't really bother me those comments. That's as far as I'll go with that one,” Smith said.

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The much-anticipated Ashes series begins on Friday at Perth Stadium.

Squads

Australia: Jack Weatherald, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith (captain), Travis Head, Cameron Green, Alex Carey, Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Brendan Doggett, Scott Boland.

England (from): Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes (captain), Jamie Smith, Brydon Carse, Gus Atkinson, Jofra Archer, Mark Wood, Shoaib Bashir

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