Never again

He lasted nearly 20 years in Test cricket. His legacy, of a new brand of cricket, will endure far longer. Gideon Haigh writes in the January edition of Wisden Asia Cricket, on why the world will not see the likes of Steve Waugh again.

No Regrets. Never Satisfied. Never Say Die. Over the last few years, the titles and themes of Steve Waugh's enduringly popular tour diaries have explored a strangely similar set of ideas - of negation, prohibition, even downright refusal. Was there in the works, one wondered, a book called Never Retire?

Waugh would never have made so bold. Yet he has been a poignant sight in recent seasons. He has stirred from his team cricket of an increasingly hectic and relentless brand, as though at the head of a Zulu impi. But he has also been on his own path, each innings a little essay in resistance: against age, rivals, critics and selectors, as well as opponents. His individual performances have become a story within the story of Australian cricket, a sub-plot assuming proportions menacing to the triumphant principal narrative. The foreshadowing of his retirement on November 26 came, therefore, as a relief as well as a sadness, freeing admirers to contemplate what he has done rather than dwell on what he might.

In fighting on, of course, Waugh was doing what he always had. The best of Waugh's innings had tended to involve fighting back rather than leading a charge. Australia were 73 for 3 when he began his Test-best 200 at Sabina Park in April 1995; 42 for 3 and 39 for 3 respectively when he began his two-part solo, 108 and 116, at Old Trafford in July 1997; 48 for 3 when he wrested control of the World Cup Super Six game against South Africa at Headingley in June 1999. "In many ways, the delicate situation has always been the one I play my best cricket in," he writes in his latest book - a remark akin to Yehudi Menuhin saying he quite liked a bit of a fiddle. Waugh seldom, moreover, abandoned any innings prematurely. It used to be an old cricket truism that batsmen were vulnerable immediately after scoring centuries, relaxed and disarmed by the landmark. Waugh scoffed at the idea. His average Test hundred, inflated by undefeated innings, was 255 - greater than any other batsman, Don Bradman and Sachin Tendulkar included. A memoir of his batting alone would be called Never Enough.

This was not always the way of it. When 20-year-old Waugh made his Test debut at the MCG against India on Boxing Day 1985, he was chosen for his eye-catching strokes in the lower middle-order, handy change bowling and, above all, youth. It was an investment in style, with the hope of substance, that did not bear fruit at once. After 52 Tests Waugh was averaging in the mid-30s with the bat and more than 45 with the ball; take away the three prosperous Ashes Tests in 1989, moreover, and his batting average shrank to less than 30. He had already spent one season, 1991-92, by the wayside; he had not, the following summer, made the No. 3 position in the Australian XI quite his own. It is arguable that Dean Jones, who in his own 52-Test career was averaging almost 47, would have been the better bet in England 10 years ago; disgruntled Victorians muttered darkly about the New South Wales hegemony in Australian cricket.

It was this 1993 tour, however, that marked the turning point in Waugh's career. That it was the first on which he kept a diary - an idea which he came up with himself rather than having it put to him by a publisher, and to which he applied himself with scrupulous care - strikes one as more than a coincidence. A calculating cricketer had always lurked beneath Waugh's natural talent; from childhood, for example, he had always counted his runs while batting, and he never lost the habit. Now that cool, rational, meticulous cricketer began to crystallise. A glimpse of the Waugh to come was seen at Headingley when he batted most of the second day in partnership with his captain Allan Border. "Batting with Border always makes you concentrate that little bit extra," Waugh wrote, "because you can see how much it means to him to give his wicket away." He admitted to having consciously "set my sights on getting a big hundred" - there were, he had come to understand, "so many tough times in cricket".

Border was 175 and Waugh 144 at the close of the day's play, but Border surprised Waugh by batting almost another hour the next morning, explaining his desire to "cause further mental and physical disintegration". `Mental disintegration', of course, is the expression Waugh has used in recent years to describe the psychological pressure his team exerts; Border is, perhaps, its intellectual godfather.

In some senses, too, it was the end of Border's career in March 1994 that prepared for Waugh the role he would fill: that of the immaculate bulwark. Under Mark Taylor's captaincy, Waugh turned seven Test centuries into 17. When his twin brother Mark was at No. 4, Steve's sternness at Nos. 5 and 6 seemed particularly pronounced: Mark batted as if in a dream, Steve as if in a trance. After watching his 170 and 61 not out at Adelaide in January 1996, indeed, two Sri Lankan players asked Waugh if he meditated; he seemed, they insisted, to be on a different plane of consciousness while batting.

This entailed sacrifices. Some of his boyish brio disappeared; he ceased to hook and seldom pulled. Again, though, this brought out qualities in him rather than suppressing existing gifts. He had, in that pinched face, those gimlet eyes, that low-slung stance, the elements of an aura - and he used it. He would come out to bat quickly to "own that space in the centre"; he tugged his old Australian cap low, as if to draw strength from the tradition of which he was part. His back-foot drive was executed like a sock to an opponent's jaw, his slog-sweep like a haymaker to the solar plexus.

That self-absorption was held against Waugh when Taylor announced his retirement in January 1999. Neither Waugh's succession nor his success was preordained; when Australia drew Test and one-day series in the West Indies that they had been expected to win easily, then went to the brink of exiting the World Cup, his aptitude seemed in doubt, not to mention his attitude. When he had Australia inch to victory over West Indies at Old Trafford in an unsuccessful effort to exclude New Zealand from the tournament's Super Six stage, he was coldly dismissive of criticism: "We're not here to win friends, mate."

Australia, of course, won the Cup - and Waugh, architect of the triumphs against South Africa at Headingley and Edgbaston, so much more. Waugh's attitude to winning friends underwent a subtle transformation too. The first group were in his own dressing room. Waugh as captain reminded me of a resolutely self-contained man surprised to find a new world opened to him by fatherhood. From the rises of Brett Lee and Adam Gilchrist, and the resurrections of Justin Langer and Matt Hayden, Waugh derived as much satisfaction as from any personal landmark; from instilling in his team his own ethos of continuous improvement, he created a culture that outlives him. Remember when you were a kid, looking up to and wanting to join the toughest gang in town? This Australian team is that gang. It has its own codes, creeds and customs. It assimilates newcomers, largely because they wish to be assimilated. And it speaks with one voice, that of its captain. As Stuart MacGill once put it, its prime directive has been: "When in Rome, do as Steve Waugh."

Waugh has also acted like the peasant who accompanied Caesars on their triumphal processions through the streets of Rome whispering, "Remember, you are dust." During the Test at Hamilton in March 2000, for instance, he donned the cap he had worn during his first series against New Zealand, when Australia had been beaten - a warning against complacency. Likewise, before the Edgbaston Test in July 2001 he gave a brief but heartfelt address about what it was like to lose an Ashes series - something only he could recall. Waugh's captaincy was almost - but not quite - a personality cult. Not quite because the loyalty of his players reflected his loyalty to them. The Australian team psychologist Sandy Gordon once asked team members to complete a questionnaire which included identifying scenarios they found "particularly mentally demanding". Waugh replied without hesitation: "Selection meetings - having to leave out players."

In one aspect of the Australians' approach, too, Waugh was able to win goodwill as well as games: through 2001 (3.77), 2002 (3.99) and 2003 (4.10), his team's scoring rate increased, until they seemed to be playing cricket on 45rpm while opponents remained grooved at 33rpm. As Inside Edge's Chris Ryan has commented astutely, the effect has been a kind of cricket with only two possible outcomes: victory or defeat. On only five occasions in Waugh's 53 Tests have his teams been stalemated. Guaranteed an outcome, Australian Test audiences have risen from 411,335 in 1999-2000 to 568,324 last summer; everywhere they go now, the Australians are feted for their enterprise. To beat them is to beat more than a team; it is to thwart a method.

In another respect, sadly, Waugh did not quite deliver on his promise. For one who prided himself on his historical awareness, he condoned in his team a very modern truculence. This did not do him justice: he was an exceedingly generous opponent off the field, and an uncommonly charitable man away from the game, as evidenced in his patronage of the Nivedita House orphanage in India. Yet, Waugh's innate resistance, his ability to shut out doubt and discord, became a shortcoming. He conspired, unwittingly, in the idea that Australia win Tests by intimidation rather than excellence - an idea willingly taken up by teams that have tried to adopt the air of Waugh's team without their skills. He failed, in this case, to harness his stature for the good of all cricketers.

For his stature grew and grew. In the final stages of his career, Waugh reminded me of Swede Levov, the Jewish athlete in Philip Roth's American Pastoral. "I have to tell you that I don't believe in death, I don't experience time as limited," Levov says. "I know it is, but I don't feel it." His final Test appearance in England, after a severe calf injury, seemed to symbolise his indestructibility: an unbeaten 157 on one leg, like an old man toying with children in his backyard. The summer of 2001-02, however, was a memento mori. In nine Tests against New Zealand then South Africa at home and away, Waugh cobbled together only 314 runs at 24.15. A few years earlier, such a streak would barely have occasioned comment; in a 36-year-old, it was interpreted as the last beats of a fading heart.

Waugh's Test captaincy was protected by the selectors' Napoleonic faith in lucky generals, but the form lapse cost him the one-day job. This, Waugh told Greg Baum of the Age recently, was a greater blow to him than he realised at the time: "You put up a brave front and say you're going to get back in here and fight hard ... At the end of it, I was at the crossroads, wondering if I should retire or play on." A timely century against Pakistan at Sharjah in October 2002 silenced doubters; his stunning hundred against England at Sydney a year ago turned them back into stark raving fans.

It passed without remark at the end of November that Waugh's designation of 2003-04 as his valedictory summer is without Australian precedent. Ian Chappell, Border, Taylor, Ian Healy, Geoff Marsh, Waugh's own brother Mark: none of these sought or were rewarded with last farewells. Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh, David Boon: these had a Test to say goodbye, but either wished or were granted no more. Bradman received his three cheers, of course, but even then nobody knew if the innings would be his last. Steve Waugh has been a cricketer sui generis. The future biographer even finds their title readymade: Never Again.

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