A year in exile ends tomorrow

Steve Smith and David Warner may wake with some relief on Thursday as they greet the final day of their ball-tampering bans but the anniversary of their humiliation will otherwise be a sombre milestone for Australia's cricket fans.

Much has changed since Cricket Australia slapped former captain Smith and his deputy Warner with 12-month suspensions for the Cape Town scandal, while giving Cameron Bancroft a lighter nine-month sentence as the rookie opener was understood to be caught up in a plot driven by others.

However, efforts to smooth the pair's rehabilitation have been in train for months, and culminated in a reunion with Aaron Finch's squad in the United Arab Emirates a week-and-a-half ago.

Pundits have questioned whether all is really forgiven in a playing group that suffered a series of humbling defeats without two of their best batsmen.

"It'd be silly not to use them," Finch said of the pair who boast over 200 matches and 22 centuries between them in one-day internationals.

New CA boss Kevin Roberts has treaded carefully since taking over from long-serving CEO James Sutherland in October, while trying to shift Australia's focus forward rather than backward.

"It was a year on Sunday since the shattering events of Cape Town. The public outcry was really confronting, but it also reinforced how much the game means to so many people," Roberts said in an emailed statement to Reuters on Wednesday.