Voila! I stirred up a lot of thoughts in the comments section in my last review. I think my review was kind of taken in a wrong way. When I set down to write the replies especially regarding Steve Waugh, they got so long that I thought I did post a review on Steve Waugh instead - probably the first and last review I will write on a personality on MS barring of course if any of my favorite personalities decide to retire. That saying, this is my third sports review (I once pledged I did write none! LOL).
First and foremost - I don’t doubt Steve Waugh’t capability in my last review - however the media did far too much melodrama with his exit - I wish he were more graceful in his retirement!
Steve Waugh is undoubtedly one of the best players I have ever seen playing. This man has an amazing record of scoring runs quickly or just stay put when the situation demands. Steve Waugh has always, and I mean always, delivered when his team was in thick spot or the situation demanded it. A prime example being that of the last day of test match. The art of being cool and turning the situation your way is something which Steve Waugh has done with unending ease . it.s a lesson on mind that our own Tendulkar can take out of his book.
However, is Steve Waugh a great captain? First lets determine what makes a good captain. There are couple of essential things behind makings of a great captain are
-The ability to back his team mates even in times of their downfall
-The ability to motivate a team even when its against the wall
-The ability to efficiently manage his team on the ground especially.
-Never say die attitude and confidence of making it to the end.
To achieve exactly what is stated above, the captain in return too needs something back. Essentially there is something very important for the captain to work with - The TEAM MATES.
Without good team players, any captain is as good as another. A captain’s glory depends on the glory of the other players and their performance; and this is where Steve Waugh has been supremely lucky. He took over from captaincy in 1995 when Australia already had beginings of a great team going. In the past few years we have seen complete dominance of Australia in test cricket is simply an extension of having a great team at hands and less at captaincy per se. No doubt, Steve Waugh has been a great influence to the team, however it is also safe to assume that he has captained probably 11 great players in form for Australia; his team mates have never failed him or failed to deliver. When they did, Australia lost or managed a draw. For example, his bowlers failed in India and so did his batsmen to a certain extent in 2001 - result we won the series. His influence in the game is clearly seen in 2001 when he got out by touching his bat to the wicket and thereby starting a downfall.
In the current series, without Glenn Mcgrath and Shane Warne around we all saw how tough it got for Australia. Indian batting was on top in all four matches and Brett Lee was treated like a teenager in the fourth test. What did Steve Waugh do then? His heroics drew the test, and that is his beauty, not his captainship beauty. Even when Hayden and Ponting literally blew our attack away, Australia were as vulnerable to a collapse as we were in the series. One look at the beginning of second, third or fourth test indicated that both teams were under immense tensions themselves. In that respect then, from just this series point of view, Ganguly is as good a captain as Steve Waugh has been (not that I compare both of them). Both played without their best bowlers and both had their batsmen on top. The result was a justifiable draw as one would imagine. If India had won the series, we did be praising Ganguly to the skies, and if the opposite had happened, more adulation for Steve.
My point is simply this - though Steve Waugh was a great captain, he was only as good a captain as others without his prime team mates. To put it more precisely, Steve Waugh’s fantastic track record in tests is more of a result of having the best people to work with than his own influence.
The second issue was the attitude on field. Before exiting, Steve Waugh gave an interview in which says that there should be no sledging in the game. Please, would someone remind him their last infamous series in West Indies where Sarawan and Glen Mcgrath came to blows? McGrath is probably the worst icon of sporting in cricket; he has never learnt to take any opposition in the spirit of the game. What happened? Certainly Steve Waugh as the captain could have had more influence on his players. It’s a shame that his players resorted to mental tactics of the game in spite of being the best in business - that too in a game which they had already won the series. I wish Steve Would could have instilled the discipline and sporting nature of the game in his players too; after all we claim he has been a great influence to the game right? Not only have Australia set a bad example of sledging in cricket, but they have also influenced other teams to follow suit including India, England and all teams. Should we also forget very easily how Steve’s men got out New Zealand in 1999 world cup by delaying tactics against windies? How about some sporting spirit there? - or was it just cunning motivated thinking?
Given that too, I admire Steve Waugh for his off field activities like Udayan in Calcutta. But please he is not a god who did that, and I simply cannot understand why the media and stature rising for him. For me Tendulkar is an even bigger hero simply because unlike Steve Waugh and his media, he chose a silent way to charity and unless the media had not questioned his character, we wouldn’t know that he has been sponsoring a group of 200 children from the last 7 years. So both players are doing great work - one chooses to live his life media way, the other personal. No grudges about that and I sincerely feel they both do great work offline. However it also depicts an important character of Steve. He loves media and he loves the attention showered on him in the media. No wonder than the current test series became a farewell series. rather than the series itself.
Has Steve Waugh been a great motivator? Yes - Steve Waugh takes the cake there - he has been behind the team like no other. I can consider him as the single most motivator of changing the game of dull and boring test cricket to results oriented challenging test cricket. I cannot deny that he has simply swung around the idea of test cricket back to everybody’s mind even when its losing its importance in the world. His attitude of WINNING a test rather than drawing it is simply a great gift for the game of cricket - and that has shown in his career. However please note, without his great team of the past, he might have still been a person content with draws. His team gave him the golden opportunity to go that extra mile and bring about a change, and in this regard, he took the opportunity and delivered them well. That’s exactly the happiness I derive from the fourth test - believe me even when the entire Australian team would settle for a draw, somewhere in his mind, Waugh wouldn’t have settled for it.
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