Waugh in charge at Lord's (May 9, 1999)

May 9, 1999

Waugh in charge at Lord's

By Trevor Chesterfield

London - Australia have an eye for a classy thoroughbred: someone who has that extra special touch and ensures he is a step ahead of the others when it comes to the skills needed to win matches.

Mark Waugh has the ability to make the sun on your back feel that little bit warmer and he treated a crowd of goodly proportions to a demonstration of why he is the leading World Cup batsman, even if it was off a Zimbabwe bowling attack which was badly exposed by some handsome Australian batting.

His fourth century took him to the top of the class: one more than Pakistan's Rameez Raja who shares three with two notable names., Vivian Richards and Sachin Tendulkar.

Now you cannot get much better in the one-day slogs than the latter two while Raja was no slouch in his day when propping up the Pakistan middle-order.

Then again, any innings of 103 which nudges junior closer to 1000 runs in a World Cup career, which he should reach in the match against South Africa at Headingley on Sunday, deserves a special nick on the red marbled honours board. Forget the gold stencil, this was the sort of effort which deserved to be chiselled on the block .

If you believe the pre-match pitch report of a team having to bother with conditions which will help seam and even spin: they forgot to tell the younger of the Waugh twins though on a day when the Super Sixes moved to headquarters. He was a bit slow at the start.

Opening the innings with Adam Gilchrist and watching Ricky Ponting build a cameo innings characterised by near exquisite timing and the odd touch of brash driving which ultimately led to his downfall, Waugh the younger had to wait his turn.

If Zimbabwe captain Alistair Campbell had hoped his bowlers had the ability to put batsmen of the wealth of experience such as Mark Waugh under pressure he has learnt nothing of the accomplished capabilities of the man. Before the Waugh show though we had the Ponting frolics.

If Ponting's innings did not help set up Waugh's ultimate performance it at least gave it the sort of spark to help it along. A chance was missed when he had seven: a difficult chance put down by Grant Flower off a cut as hard as any struck during his efforts; had it been taken it would have bordered on the miraculous; the crowd appreciated the effort with a roar of support for the underdogs.

There were times when Waugh senior, otherwise known as Steve, or Tugga, was batting that the younger twin's style became as patchy as the sun filtering through the cloud. He also almost added to the injury list when a straight drive hit the captain on the helmet which he had to replace. Not at all a brotherly gesture: and this after Darren Lehmann departed with a broken index finger and his World Cup seemingly over.

Steve eventually weighed in with 62 while he got a good view of his brother's ability to score in just about what corner of ground he wanted. At least the crowd had something to cheer about, even if it was not England batting on this occasion.