Never Say Die - Steve Waugh<br>World Cup Diary - Ricky Ponting

Those fine Australians are still the best Test side and are world-beaters in limited-overs cricket. But there is one important aspect of modern cricketing life they have yet to master: writing books.

It is possible for the contemporary cricketer to write well. Mike Atherton's Opening Up is a good example. It fulfilled most of the criteria readers want when they hand over a few pounds for such a book: dressing-room gossip, forthright opinion and insight into the way the game is played at its best. But with these two books Australian Captain Past and Australian Captain Future show they are not there yet.

There is, of course, an argument that we should expect little from sportsmen who write and, if we buy their books, we get what we deserve. After all, they are cricketers not authors and it would be surprising if Vikram Seth or Terry Pratchett was a master of the slash drive for six over point. But, professionally, they do at least stick to what they are good at.

Steve Waugh's slim effort is the better. Most of it recalls his hundred against England at the SCG last winter, when he believed he was batting to save his career. Remember the Richard Dawson off-break he belted through extra cover to bring up his ton from the last ball of the day? He was already breathing the rarefied air of a man who had scored 10,000 Test runs and on 98, as the shadows from the stand touched the square, he hit the boundary that meant he had equalled Don Bradman's total of 29 Test centuries.

Apart from Waugh's own thoughts analysis of the innings comes from his team-mates Justin Langer and Adam Gilchrist. Nasser Hussain was also asked to comment. He reveals that, as he congratulated Waugh, he wanted to tell him how much he was admired and respected by the England side. But all that came out was "well batted".

Gilchrist and Langer provide the "mateship" that seems inescapable in books written about Australia's cricket team. In Ricky Ponting's World Cup Diary the "mateship" is served up in bucketfuls. Everyone in the squad has a nickname, so the air is thick with mention of Bing, Brute and Buck, Boof, Mabo and Marto, TJ and Tugga. But, despite the hours spent together and even though much of Ponting's book is set in the dressing room and team bus and on the practice ground, his portraits of the Australian squad are rarely more than superficial.

The momentum in his diary comes from Australia getting to the final and winning the World Cup. He was fortunate that the competition gave him two other outstanding talking points: whether to boycott the game in Zimbabwe ("not a place I'd like to go on my holidays") and the implications of Shane Warne's failed drugs test.

Like Kim Hughes and the former Prime Minister Bob Hawke before him Warney kept up a fine Australian tradition when he wept in public while confessing to his team-mates that he had been popping his mum's slimming pills. An embarrassed silence followed and Ponting, perhaps inappropriately in the circumstances, suggested they should break for something to eat before discussing the consequences.

Between matches Ponting likes life low-key. He relaxes by playing golf or browsing the equipment in golfing stores. If the shops are closed, he will go out for a quiet meal with his law student wife, Rianna. Sadly her nickname remains a secret.

Waugh has now written 11 books and the publishers are wrong to say this is his most important. That will be the book he inevitably writes now that he has retired. To do his career justice it needs to be as shrewd and spicy as the recollections of his one-time rival, Atherton.

As for Waugh's successor, the idea of another 10 books is sobering. With luck the seven iron will prove a mightier distraction than the pen.