Australia batsman Steve Smith feels that his team have unfinished business in England from their last Ashes tour. Australia retained the Ashes for the first time since 2001 but the series itself was a draw with the visitors losing the last Test.
"To know that we'd got the Ashes back was pretty special," he told The Unplayable Podcast's Ashes Revisited special.
"Unfortunately, we couldn't win them which is something I'd still like to do.
"It just doesn't feel the same … you get to the end of the series and we're there holding up the Ashes but we'd just lost the last Test match, and we actually hadn't won anything.
"It was cool to get them back, but I was actually more disappointed that we hadn't won them."
Smith was the player that most commentators said was the difference between the two sides.
Playing his first Test series since the 2018 ball-tampering scandal led to him getting a one-year ban and losing the captaincy, Smith scored a mind-numbing 774 runs at an average of 110.57 from four Tests played.
It was an Ashes series aggregate in the UK surpassed only by Don Bradman (974 at 139.14 from five Tests in 1930) and Mark Taylor (839 at 83.9 from six in 1989).
Smith however said that he left The Oval after the final Test with conflicting emotions. "From my personal perspective, I think it's unfinished business. It's great to retain the Ashes but it just doesn't sit right with me when you don't win it," he said.
"We drew the series -- good, but not great. So I probably left at the end of the fifth Test (feeling) more disappointed than a sense of achievement."
