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Elbow injury forces Smith to return home

The former Australian skipper will miss a portion of the Bangladesh Premier League due to injury

Former Australia captain Steve Smith will be sidelined for a short period after he picked up an elbow injury while playing in the Bangladesh Premier League Twenty20 tournament.

Smith will return to Australia for further medical treatment on his elbow, his BPL franchise Comilla Victorians announced.

"Smith has suffered an elbow injury. We are not sure how he picked it up, but the last two days he could not bat in training due to the problem," Victorians' head coach Mohammad Salahuddin told AFP.

"He had an MRI test here but the result was not very clear. He sent the report to Australian physicians who advised him to return home immediately."

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Smith, who was leading Comilla in the tournament, scored just 13 runs in his two matches, including a duck in the last match, in which his team was dismissed for a lowly 63 runs.

Salahuddin said he expected Smith to return to the league once he had recovered from the injury. 

Comilla signed Smith initially as a back-up to Pakistan's Shoaib Malik but later added him to the squad following clearance from the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB).

The BCB had initially blocked his participation after other franchises raised objections as Smith was not included in the initial players' draft list for the tournament.

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Smith is currently serving a one-year ban from international cricket and Australia’s domestic JLT Sheffield Shield and KFC Big Bash League over a ball-tampering scandal last year.

His former deputy David Warner, who is serving a similar ban for his role in the scandal, is also playing in the BPL, captaining the Sylhet Sixers franchise. 

South African big hitter AB de Villiers, West Indies' Chris Gayle and England's Alex Hales are among the other international stars set to play in Bangladesh's lucrative Twenty20 league.