In an exclusive interview, Australian vice-captain Steve Smith has confessed he "probably wasn't quite ready" for Test cricket when he was thrown into the Ashes furnace 15 years ago.
In a one-on-one chat with Fox Cricket's Mark Howard, the 36-year-old opened up on the highs and lows of his illustrious career, including the 2019 Ashes and Cape Town ball-tampering scandal.
Asked what his "toughest time on the field" in an Ashes contest, Smith flagged the 2010/11 campaign when England won the urn on Australian soil for the first time in a generation.
The New South Welshman, who at the time only had two Test caps to his name, scored 159 runs at 31.80 across the series, hitting a maiden fifty in a losing cause at the SCG.
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"England had a really good side at that point," Smith recalled.
"I was just coming into the team. I was only playing in my third, fourth and fifth Test matches.
"I was young, batting down the order and trying to find my way. That was tricky, and I probably wasn't quite ready at that stage either.
"I hadn't figured out how I wanted to go about playing. I was still a bit of a bits and pieces player. I was bowling disgusting leg spin.
"Just trying to find my place, so that was tricky at that stage."
Smith was dropped from the Test side before his triumphant return in 2013, helping Australia whitewash England during that summer's Ashes series.
Over the past 12 years, the right-hander has accumulated 10,218 Test runs at 57.40 with 36 hundreds, making him comfortably Australia's leading run-scorer during that period.
However, Smith confessed the "weight of expectation" on him created extra pressure in the Test arena, acknowledging failure is more common than success when being a Test batter.
"Sometimes the bigger and better you get, the more you're expected to do well," Smith said.
"That weight of expectation can perhaps weigh on you sometimes, so managing that expectation can be a tricky game sometimes.
"As a batter, you've only got one chance. You get a good ball or you do something silly and you're back in the sheds. Particularly on the wickets that we're playing on at the moment, there is quite a lot in them and you need some luck to score some runs, there's no doubt about that, particularly as a top-order player."
Smith pinpointed his dismissal to Indian speedster Jasprit Bumrah during the series opener of last summer's Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Perth, where he was trapped on the pads for a golden duck by an unplayable delivery that deviated viciously off the deck.
"I think back to last year at Perth, I got one from Bumrah, hit me on the pad," Smith recalled.
"I remember quite a lot of people actually saying, 'Geez, look at the position Steve's in here.
What's he doing?'
"I look back at the numbers and it deviated like two-and-a-half degrees. And I'm like, 'If I'm hitting that, I'm actually doing something horribly wrong.'
"Just for me, knowing that I'm doing the right things and then trusting it, that it's going to work over a long period."
However, Smith isn't as forgiving when he makes a mistake in the middle, confessing he can be his own harshest critic at times.
"If I do something wrong, I get pretty angry at myself," he explained.
"Generally that night, I'll punish myself. I might punish myself by going and doing a few runs on the treadmill or something like that.
"I always evaluate my innings and what I could have done, should have done, did wrong.
"You've got to be honest with yourself.
"When I make a mistake and it's a stupid one that I know that I shouldn't make, that's when I get angry at myself."
The first Ashes Test between Australia and England gets underway at Perth Stadium on November 21.
"It's our worst team, obviously, since 2010, that's the mail anyway," Smith laughed, referencing recent comments from former England bowler Stuart Broad.
"There's obviously been the back and forth and plenty of banter, which I don't like to really get involved in.
"It's going to be a wonderful series. I think England are a really good side at the moment. We've been a really good side over the last three or four years in particular, making two Test Championship finals.