The man who changed the game
Never has a cricketer had so appropriate a surname
Simon Barnes
26-Nov-2003
To mark Steve Waugh's impending retirement we have pleasure in reproducing this essay, by Simon Barnes of The Times, which appears in the 2003 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack:
Never has a cricketer had so appropriate a surname. But let us understand
that aright. Steve Waugh's cricketing warfare has never been a matter of
hatred, jingoism and senseless aggression, any more than a matter of
chivalry, romance and the search for personal glory.
No. Waugh's wars have been about the most efficient possible means
of despatching the enemy. They are about a clear understanding of the
opposition's strengths and weaknesses, and an equally uncluttered
understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of his own side. Sometimes
the results are spectacular, but that is by the way. Spectacle is a by-product
of a hard head, clear vision, an analytical mind and an impersonal lust
for victory.
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Steve Waugh: an analytical mind and an impersonal lust for victory © Getty Images |
Waugh wants to defeat you personally - but nothing personal, if you
see what I mean. He has that air possessed by very few, even at the highest
level of sport: that sense of vocation, that urge to beat not the opposition
but the limitations of your self, your game, your world. There was
something of that unearthly quality in Ayrton Senna, the Brazilian racing
driver. Ellen MacArthur, the British sailor, has it too.
Waugh has the gift of reducing complex matters to simple ones: he
sees without prejudice how best to exploit the opposition's weakness, how
best to deploy his own strengths. The approach, cold-blooded, scientific,
is that of a general, rather than a character in Sir Thomas Malory.
Waugh has conducted his cricketing campaigns in a mood of dispassionate ferocity. He famously remarked that sledging was "mental disintegration"; but that is not so much the aim of Waugh's sledging as of Waugh's cricket. The batting, bowling and fielding of his teams have all had the aim of causing mental disintegration: a moment of uncertainty that leads to self-doubt that leads to defeat. Waugh always wants defeat to be personal and complete, the better to prey on the opposition mind. And in the process, he has transformed Test cricket. Over the past four years, his Australians played in a manner that was once unthinkable.
A captain is usually assessed on the way he operates his bowlers and sets
his field, for it is supposed to be the fielding captain who controls the
tempo of a match. Waugh is, of course, spectacularly good at all that. But
it is the way he manages his batting line-up that is revolutionary.
In 1990, when there had been a long-running debate about intimidatory
bowling, runs suddenly flowed in county cricket through a combination of
flat pitches and a different type of ball. Simon Hughes, still operating as
a bowler, asked the plaintive question: "What about intimidatory batting?"
Under Waugh, Australia's batting has become the most intimidating aspect
of modern cricket. The Australian batsmen seek to frighten opponents every
bit as much as the fast-bowling quartet of the 1980s West Indians. They
all act the same way, and they're all coming to get you.
Waugh's Australia bat with Waugh's dispassionate ferocity. They bat as
a team, with personal glory very much a secondary matter. And above
all, they bat fast. In 2001, Australia scored at 3.77 runs an over:
breathtakingly fast by traditional standards. In 2002, Australia scored their
Test runs at a rate of 3.99 an over. Only once in history has a team scored
faster through a whole year - in 1910, Australia scored their runs at 4.47
every six balls, and there were far fewer Tests then. By comparison,
England's run-rate in 2002 was 3.37 - and that was England's fastest rate
in almost a century. Other nations are following the Australian lead, but
they're not as good at it yet.
South Africa, once dour, now bat at a significantly faster tempo: the
first thing they did in 2003 was to score 445 in a day against Pakistan.
The sea-change in Michael Vaughan of England over the past year was
in tempo. Speed is not an accident. It is a tactic. It can't be done without
very good players, but it is not the direct result of having good players.
It is the result of astute, logical, cold-blooded thought on the subject of
how best to win a cricket match.
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Waugh accepts some rare personal glory after his hundred against England at Sydney in January 2003 © Getty Images |
We traditionally think of fast scoring as something dashing and devil-maycare: Jessop, Milburn, Botham. It was merry and jaunty and beery,
the way you batted if you were a bit of a lad. Fast scoring was not
altogether serious - it came in the drive-for-show category. Waugh's
Australians have put it into the putt-for-dough department. For them, fast
scoring is not a bonnets-over-the-windmill slogfest: it is deadly serious.
It is done first to undermine the opposing bowlers, and with them the rest
of the fielding side. And then it gives Australia extra time in the quest
for 20 wickets: a free session for your bowlers every innings. No wonder
it took them only 11 playing days to win each of the last two Ashes series.
Most non-Australian cricket followers would admit when pressed that
they can't always tell one Australian batsman from another. They all wear
green helmets with the Australian coat of arms above the grille, they are
all good, they are all vindictively aggressive towards anything loose, they
are all hugely confident. They bat as a unit and there's always another
one waiting to destroy you. A bit like the film Zulu.
The wicketkeeper scores even faster than the top six and the tail bat
seriously, always an aspect of a consistently victorious side. And just as
the West Indian bowling ground the opposition down, softened them up
and destroyed their confidence, so the Australian batting does the same
thing.
The influence of one-day cricket is obvious, but it is not that the
Australians bat in Test matches as if they were in a one-dayer. It is rather
that the thought processes of one-day cricket - the need to capitalise on
every error of the opposition, the presumption that you look to make runs
off every ball - have been adapted to the Test context.
Hit-and-giggle? Far from it. There is no suggestion that a wicket is any
less valuable to an Australian than it was before: Sydney 2003 was the
first time since England's previous visit four years earlier that they had
been bowled out twice in a home Test. But wickets are seen more as team
than as individual possessions. Every batting tactic, including that of
speed, must be adapted to the conditions. In knuckling-down conditions,
Australian batsmen will knucke down. But send them a bad ball at any
time in any context and hear it thwack into the boundary board: first over
of the day, last over of the day, just after a wicket, just before tea, 50 for
3 or 200 for 0 - bam. And don't even think about a nightwatchman.
When Andy Bichel was moved up to No. 3 at Sydney in January 2003, nightwatchman was the word that sprang to some commentators' lips, but what he was actually doing was the opposite - softening the new ball.
It is not so much a tactic as an emphasis: when in doubt, attack. Not for fun - as a thought-out ploy. As a team policy. Speed is not self-indulgence but duty. The idea is to win every session of every Test match, and mostly that is what Australia have been doing. If things go amiss, there is always the captain to come in later in the order. The only disappointment in Waugh's later career is that there have been so few occasions when he has been required to do his one-man rescue act. The tactic of speed has been enthralling, but Waugh did not do it to enthral. He did it to enslave. There was an awful lot of guff talked about
"brighter cricket" in the 1960s: if that was brighter cricket, what would
audiences of 40 years back have made of the Australian speed machine? Waugh doesn't employ the tactic to make cricket brighter. But - and it is an aspect of his greatness - he didn't allow his prejudice against mere entertainment to muddle his thinking. In its intention, the Australian strokemaking is as flamboyant as an atom bomb.
The definitive treatise on warfare as a science of destruction rather than
a chivalric art was written by Karl von Clausewitz in Napoleonic times.
It is called On War. If a similarly hard-nosed book were to be written on
cricket, the same title could be used. With a small adjustment to the spelling.
Simon Barnes is chief sportswriter on The Times.