The wounds of Sandpapergate have not healed fully. When poked, Australia’s stand-in captain Steve Smith, who was one of the central figures in that ball-tampering scandal in Cape Town seven years ago, is still touchy about it.

Smith resorted to mockery to counter a Sandpapergate jibe from former England spinner Monty Panesar on the eve of the Ashes opener in Perth.

In a pre-series interview with an online betting company, Panesar had suggested that England’s players should question the ethics of his re-appointment, and called on the UK media to question his motives.

“If it were the opposite, the Australian media would be all over it,” Panesar said. “They would have said, if it was any of the English players, ‘the cheaters have arrived.’ Right?”

In response to a question from an Australian journalist, Smith declared that he was going to go “off-topic” to respond to Panesar’s comments.

“Who in the room has seen Mastermind, and Monty Panesar on that? Any of you?” Smith said, before listing several of the flustered answers that Panesar had given to presenter John Humphrys on BBC TV in 2019.

“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 that believes that Athens is in Germany, that’s a start, or that 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,” he said, subsequently adding that he was “pretty chilled” on his return to the captaincy.

“I’m a lot more relaxed these days.”