Steve Waugh - 'Never Say Die'

[Donny]

Poms must fire up: Waugh
By Robert Craddock
October 30, 2003

STEVE WAUGH believes England must learn to play with more passion and purpose if it is to fulfil its potential as a cricket nation.

In his latest book Steve Waugh: Never Say Die (Harper Sports) released yesterday, the Australian Test captain concedes he was not impressed by England's modest performances at the World Cup in South Africa in March.

"I was disappointed with the way England refused to be aggressive and back themselves," Waugh writes.

"Instead, in pressure situations they too often seem reluctant to have a real go. "I have felt for a long time the Poms need to play with more passion and purpose, be prepared to play through injuries, take on any challenge, and have each man participating with a goal of collecting the man-of-the-match award."

Waugh's reference to playing through injury airs a theory held privately by a lot of fellow players that England has too many soft withdrawals from major matches through minor injuries.

Waugh, however, was impressed with the promise of the English bowling stocks that toured last summer even though the tourists lost 4-1.

Waugh said lanky seamer Steve Harmison was quick, "had a West Indian look about him" and had the quality to lead the attack "when he learns to work out batsmen".

Ironically, Harmison missed the start of the second Test against Bangladesh in Chittagong yesterday because of a lower back injury.

"Faith is the key word for England's hierarchy here - the selectors must back the younger players through good and bad times, indicating clearly these are the men who they want to lead the way," Waugh wrote.

"The players sense and appreciate the support and repay it more often than not."

Never Say Die spotlights Waugh's fabulous 102 against England at the SCG last summer, which seems destined to be remembered as one of Australia's most famous Test centuries.

Waugh concedes he felt pre-innings pressure and the weight of a supportive nation on his shoulders as he waited in the dressing room for one of the defining innings of his career.

[Donny]

Let Waugh bat on forever
By Cameron Bell
November 9, 2003 - Fox Sports

GLENN McGrath believes Steve Waugh's amazing start to the season for NSW is a clear indication the Test captain deserves to be in the Australian team for as long as he chooses.

McGrath's comments come a month after it was declared Waugh was only guaranteed the two Tests against Zimbabwe and had to take his chances like every other batsman to play against India this summer.

Waugh is said to have been shocked after his discussion with chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns, which took place just before the Zimbabwe series.

The Sunday Telegraph has learned there have been high-level discussions with his corporate backers about marketing and sponsorship proposals to tie in with the Sydney Test (January 2-6) if Steve was to stand down after that match.

But since the Zimbabwe series he has continued his incredible form. He scored two centuries for NSW last week - guiding the Blues to victory in both forms of the game.

Since Waugh was controversially dropped from the Australian one-day team in February last year, his record has been phenomenal.

He has played 45 games in total, scoring 2930 runs at 56.34, including 14 centuries. He is averaging 55 in Test cricket, including five centuries; 55.43 in Pura Cup cricket; and 64.25 in the ING Cup matches.

"I've always said age shouldn't play a factor in cricket and picking teams and if Stephen is still producing, which he is, then he should be in the team," McGrath said. "Whenever anybody has questioned Stephen, he does the only thing he can and that's go out on the field and produce.

"He has proved time and time again he is a big match player and produces his best when he is under pressure. If people want to keep questioning him, then he'll keep producing.

"I know personally that Stephen still has the desire, he still has the focus and the attitude to succeed. I actually think he's getting better with age.

"I also know how much he still wants to play for his country and still wants to succeed."

Blues coach Steve Rixon wondered how anybody could question Waugh's status, especially as he was still building big scores and guiding teams to victory.

"I can't see how anybody could possibly say a bad word about Stephen. He's a guy who keeps coming up with the goods whenever there is a challenge in front of him," Rixon said.

"He'd much rather be coming to the crease at 3-40 than 3-400.

"How can you say anything but positive things about his form, just as you couldn't find anything negative to say about Matthew Hayden.

"I was there when Steve debuted for NSW and, to this day, he still has the same competitive edge he had since he started.

"His attitude and positive brand of cricket has filtered through the national team over the years he has been there."

Waugh's manager Robert Joske refused to divulge if the Test captain had been stung by his chat with Hohns.

"As far as we are concerned, it's simply business as usual. Stephen is just looking forward to India this summer and is really taking each match as it comes," Joske said.

"He is in magnificent form and he is enjoying his cricket very much. He is really excited at the moment to be playing so well.

"He is also extremely fit and I know he has a few goals left in the game. If he didn't have anything left to play for, he would quit instantly."

Waugh has only hinted about his goals, that include winning the "Holy Grail" tour of India late next year. McGrath, for one, has no doubt that India may well be on Waugh's mind.

"Since he has been captain, there are two series we have yet to win and that is playing Sri Lanka away and India away," McGrath said. "Both of them are up next year. While Stephen hasn't told anybody exactly what he wants, maybe that may be it."

[Donny]

Indian summer
November 15, 2003


With last summer's slump squarely behind him, Steve Waugh has his eye on India. Greg Baum reports.

Steve Waugh's last legs will not easily be cut from beneath him. He has spent this year in a blaze of runs. His crisis of form last summer and the fuss it created seems a long time ago.

He has started this summer with three rasping centuries in the past two weeks, prompting a commentator to say that he is batting like brother Mark, meaning not a retired Test cricketer, but a dream.

Sitting in the Hobart sun, Waugh says he has steeled himself to concentrate only on batting when he is at the crease, shutting his mind to all other distractions and speculations. He says he is in the sort of form in which runs flow effortlessly and centuries arrive almost of their own accord.

He has been careful not to tamper with that form, batting in the nets for only as long as it takes to feel the ball on the bat and sometimes choosing to face only part-timers.

"I know when I'm in pretty good form, which I am at the moment, and I try to take that out in the middle and not use it up in the nets." On Tuesday at Bellerive, Waugh's net bowler was NSW physio Paddy Farhart. The next day he smashed another century.

Waugh is fit in body as well as mind. Two days before the Bellerive match, he walked 12 kilometres through swamp and rugged bushland on Tasmania's west coast as part of a charity expedition organised by racing driver Mark Webber. He now wears a compression garment like a stocking beneath his whites, which he says reduces lactic acid build-up, speeds recovery and allows him to bowl more now than for many seasons.

"The way I'm playing now is the best I've ever played," he says. "Physically and mentally, I could play for another five years. But there's got to be a point to it."

Besides, he knows it is not as simple as that. He says he speaks regularly to chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns, the latest time "very recently", and that they periodically disagree. That can only mean that Hohns thinks the captain's time is nearly up and the captain does not. Waugh arches away from that bouncer. "I'm not going to talk too much about what was said," he says.

Waugh says next year's tours of India and Sri Lanka - the only lands not conquered by Australia in his time - are the obvious last frontiers on the march to immortality, but he is uncharacteristically fatalistic about his prospects of making them. "I don't know if I'm going to be able to tick them off, but whoever goes there will. I've had a good run. If I had my wish, it would be to be in Kolkata and to win that series. But I'm not sure it's going to happen."

Waugh says his time of greatest self-doubt was not when the heat was seemingly at its fiercest last summer, but nearly a year before, when it was announced that he had been dropped from the one-day team just as he was leaving for a Test tour of South Africa. For others before him, demotion from the one-day team was the tolling of a bell that they could not put out of their heads.

"It hit me between the eyes, and two days later I've got to go on tour, captain the side, get my act together. You put up a brave front and say you're going to get back in here and fight hard. But mentally, it was very difficult on that tour. I struggled.

"At the end of it, I was at the crossroads, wondering if I should retire or play on."

Wife Lynette counselled him not to make his decision in the heat of the moment. "I didn't want it to end that way. I knew I was a much better player than what I was showing at that time.

"There were a lot of people doubting me because of my age, thinking I must have lost my capabilities. I knew I hadn't. I knew I could do much better and I wanted to show that I could."

Waugh says he has not spoken to old, long-serving teammates about retirement because the decision, if not pre-empted by the selectors, has to be his own.

"In anything, you know right and wrong, and right time and wrong time.

"I've always tried to be my own person and make my own decisions."

Waugh says he knew what was best for himself last summer, when half the country was prevailing on him to retire, and says he has been proved right.

Some of the bowling attacks he has faced since have been unprepossessing, but a man can play only the bowling that comes.

Waugh has faced and overcome all the crises of motivation that typically beset a sportsman of his age. A wife and three growing children is one. "Cricket's in my blood. It's what I love doing. It's what I'm good at. My family appreciates that. They know that if I wasn't playing, I probably wouldn't be the same person."

While he was training in Hobart, son Austin turned four in Sydney. "You've just got to manage your life," he says. "You're generally away for birthdays and anniversaries. You've just got to celebrate in different ways."

Waugh deals equably with the setbacks and irritations of touring life without losing his love for the game. "You know there are ups and downs. You're not going to love cricket every minute you play and every minute you travel. There are tough times, and it can be hard to motivate. But something small - a song you hear on the radio, or highlights of a cricket match from five years ago - suddenly fires you up and you're ready to go again."

The game continues to throw up surprises, even in empty grounds against unknown opponents, such as NSW's successful chase of 302 in 48 overs against WA last week.

"I haven't done that before, with any team," says Waugh, who made an unbeaten century. "There's always something new. It doesn't have to be a major milestone playing for Australia."

Waugh says he does not yearn for a more restful existence. Rather, he invites attack, for by nature he needs something to chafe against. "I've always expected it. I've always wanted it. If you give it out, you've got to take it.

" If the game meanders along, and is over- friendly, I'm going to struggle. I need something to get me on edge."

Waugh says the generation gap between himself and, say, Michael Clarke, is easily bridged in a team environment. "You know you're from a different era. They dress differently from you and their taste in music is completely opposite. But the great thing about team sport is that you've got to learn to mix with people who do things differently.

"In individual sports, you can do things your own way all the time and become obsessed with yourself. In a team sport, you've got to fit in with other people. You've got to listen to their music and cop stick about the pants you're wearing."

Returning to captain NSW last season created a problem because the younger players knew of him, but did not know him, and he did not know them. "It got to the stage where one player said he found it too nerve-racking to bowl while I was standing in slips. He kept looking at me rather than bowling. Once we had a chat, everything was fine.

"But you don't realise the effect you have on players. I still see myself as an average cricketer and an average guy, but obviously in the eyes of others, who've been watching me on TV for 15 years, it can be daunting. You don't always appreciate that."

Waugh is confident of his body. "I'm fitter now than four or five years ago. I've done a lot more work on my legs and hamstrings."

He denies that the 50 average matters to him, saying if it did, he could have retired at almost any time in the past two years.

"At the start, you want to get all these Test centuries and have a great average. Then you see more of the world, see people struggling and you think, it's only a bloody number. In 20 years' time, it's not going to comfort you if you've got no mates."

He is proud of Australia's record, of the entertainment value it gives and even of the way it now conducts itself.

"We made a conscious effort in England a couple of years ago to be remembered not only as a very good cricket side, but one that played in the right spirit. We've been on the right track since. We've gone off the rails once or twice, and paid a pretty heavy price.

"We want young kids to follow in our footsteps. We don't want to do the wrong thing on TV and see under-10 kids doing the same thing. There's nothing worse than that."

He says he is not afraid of retirement because he is already deeply involved in non-cricket enterprises, chiefly charitable foundations here and in India.

"I know there are plenty of challenges out there. I want to make a difference in people's lives. I think that's the key."

Waugh visits his home for the children of leprosy sufferers in Kolkata regularly, and is trying to raise $500,000 to build a centre for 200 girls on nearby land donated by the Greek Orthodox Church. In Australia, he is looking to establish a foundation for talented but underprivileged children in all fields.

He says he is not religious, just moved. "I was certainly touched by meeting Mother Teresa. Whenever I go back to Kolkata, I still go to see the sisters."

Last time, he met a 91-year-old who was still working. "I get motivated by inspirational people. People who have done it tough, done it against the odds, done something different."

Then he was off to another team meeting, another cricket match, another century.

He says he is looking forward to the summer's Tests against India, the "big matches, big rounds, big crowds".

As he speaks, it is impossible to think that he will not be there. Steve Waugh has always been a hard man to get out.