'Mark Waugh showed he was a great player'

The 1989 Ashes showed me the urn meant a lot and I drew a picture of it in my diary at the time of the 1990-91 series. We had just been reinvigorated, we fancied ourselves and won 3-0. Our team traditionally won in Australia, apart from when playing West Indies, and we had won the World Cup in 1987 and the Ashes in 1989, so the team was getting confident. I was the final little cog in the team and by that stage was feeling in a confident mood because I had settled into the team. However, there was still a bit of trepidation because England put out some pretty good names.

In the second Test at Melbourne Bruce Reid was world class [his match figures were 13 for 148 and Healy took seven catches in the match]. It was a real shame he wasn't able to stay on the park. He was great for me because he'd surprise the batsmen with his bounce and they'd nick nice, high catches.

At Sydney in the third Test I got about six stitches above my eye after a rebound from David Gower's pads off Greg Matthews. [He also broke a finger in two places taking a catch off Michael Atherton in the last Test in Perth.] I had to go off and get it fixed, but it was good to come back and get 69, my highest score in Test cricket at the time. But 175 runs at 25 in the series was pretty low. I really should have averaged 30 to 35 over my career, but I had a slow start and dipped a bit at the end to finish at about 27.

The next stop was Adelaide and Mark Waugh made his debut and scored 138. England were bowling really well to Waugh and Greg Matthews [he made 65 in a stand of 171] and it was a memorable partnership. For Waugh the batting was pretty easy, just like it was for him in most parts of his career. It showed he was a great player and we knew he'd be around for years.

After getting his century he made a joke as the team was leaving the dressing room that he should have been in the team years ago. It was said loud enough for Allan Border to hear and everybody laughed at him mucking around.