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Courtesy www.pdfbooksfree.pk One Who Will - Pages 22/4/05 12:10 PM Page i ‘ONE WHO WILL’ THE SEARCH FOR STEVE WAUGH Courtesy www.pdfbooksfree.pk One Who Will - Pages 22/4/05 12:10 PM Page ii It had been a long hard tour. A brief press conference for the Sydney members of the touring party was ending when someone said, ‘I suppose you blokes will be playing grade on Saturday.’ It was meant to be a joke, there was a mutter of dissent, but then a quiet voice said, ‘I know one who will.’ It was Steve Waugh. Courtesy www.pdfbooksfree.pk One Who Will - Pages 22/4/05 12:10 PM Page iii ‘ONE WHO WILL’ THE SEARCH FOR STEVE WAUGH Jack Egan Courtesy www.pdfbooksfree.pk One Who Will - Pages 22/4/05 12:10 PM Page iv First published in Australia in 2004 Copyright © Jack Egan, 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that adminsters it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Every effort has been made to contact and acknowledge fully copyright holders of materials cited in this book, and any omissions are inadvertent, not deliberate. Anyone who wishes to should contact the publisher to register their interests as copyright holders for subsequent impressions. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Egan, Jack. One who will: the search for Steve Waugh. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 1 74114 386 1. 1. Waugh, Steve, 1965– . 2. Cricket captains—Australia— Biography. 3. Cricket players—Australia—Biography. I. Title. 796.358092 Typeset in 11.5/15 Garamond by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough, Victoria Printed by Griffin Press, Netley, South Australia 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Courtesy www.pdfbooksfree.pk One Who Will - Pages 22/4/05 12:10 PM Page v CONTENTS 1 Bankstown Saturday 27 September 2003 1 2 Scared and Shy Waugh’s test debut 5 3 Modern Cricket Influence and myth 11 4 A Shot Duck The second tied Test 15 5 Attitude Bob Simpson’s contribution 19 6 Just Do It The 1987 World Cup 25 7 Down in the Dumps Pakistan 1988 33 8 Counting Bouncers Marshall, Ambrose, Walsh and Patterson 41 9 How to Play Cricket England 1989 49 10 ‘Sort of Tense’ Dropped from the Test team 61 11 Picnic Point Road, Panania Growing up 71 12 The Kitchen Sink Failure and technique 85 13 Up the Order Batting number 3 91 14 Stuck in There Maturity and consistency 99 15 Thanks, but No Thanks The search for Steve Waugh 115 16 In Your Dreams West Indies 1995 121 17 ‘Lunch’ Dion Bourne and Bankstown 131 18 Arjuna’s Revenge The changing world order 139 19 Still the One Life at the top 151 20 Fairy Bread Money and the ACA 163 21 A Bit of Stick The one-day captaincy 171 22 Steve Who? Shamlu Dudeja and the Udayan Home 175 23 O’Reilly’s Collie Dog The captaincy 183 24 Two Miracles The 1999 World Cub 197 25 Outside the Square Modern coaching 207 26 Sixteen Straight The winning streak 213 27 Body Language Steve Waugh’s tour diaries 221 28 The Utmost Respect Time for a change 229 29 Hype and the Hundred ‘It wasn’t about the team anymore’ 235 30 The Heat of the Moment Sledging and the ‘Spirit of Cricket’ 245 31 The Last Summer Hype and hoop-la 265 32 The Search for Steve Waugh 279 Acknowledgements 287 Bibliography 289 Index 291 Courtesy www.pdfbooksfree.pk v One Who Will - Pages 22/4/05 12:10 PM Page vi Courtesy www.pdfbooksfree.pk One Who Will - Pages 22/4/05 12:10 PM Page 1 1 BANKSTOWN Saturday 27 September 2003 The Friday was hot and still, a September prelude to summer, a perfect day for cricket. Overnight the southerly came through and on Saturday morning it was blustery and cool at Bankstown Oval, but the small crowd—60 or 70—was out of the wind in the main stand. The ground was green and trim, the Stephen and Mark Waugh Pavilion immaculate with its cream and green paint and its matching Dion Bourne Scoreboard, named for the twins’ uncle. Dion Bourne, Bev Waugh’s brother, played cricket for Bankstown for twenty years and scored a record 9131 runs for the club, most of them in first grade. He captained first grade for seven years, was treasurer of the club for nineteen years and eventually became a State selector. He was known to all as ‘Lunch’, possibly because of a milk advertisement from the 1960s with the slogan ‘Crack a bottle with lunch’. The Oval has a picket fence, painted cream to match the pavil- ions, and advertisements are spaced around it for Schweppes, Bankstown City Credit Union, Revesby Workers’ Club, Bankstown Sports Club, Toyota, and local solicitors Macree Scully Karras. The game—a one-dayer to open the Sydney grade season— started at 9.30. I arrived at 9.35 to find Bankstown 1 for 1, the Waugh twins at the crease. Wests’ opening bowler was Daniel McLauchlan, said to be as quick as anyone in Sydney grade. His partner Colin Barry is not as quick, but Wests’ coach Neil D’Costa Courtesy www.pdfbooksfree.pk 1 One Who Will - Pages 22/4/05 12:10 PM Page 2 2 ‘One Who Will’ says he can bowl to a plan and can move the ball off the seam. ‘We weren’t going to give them anything on their legs,’ D’Costa said, and the plan was to make them go for their shots on the off and hope to get one ‘off the edge or through the gate’. Wests’ uniform for one-day games is black pants and a white top with a wide horizontal black stripe. Bankstown wear blue pants with a vertical blue and white striped top with a red Toyota logo on the back. It’s hard to tell the Waugh brothers apart in their helmets, but when they move, the difference is evident. Mark looks relaxed and assured, as ever, middling the ball and at one stage feigning a charge, then, when Barry drops short, caressing it through cover off the back foot. Steve is more purposeful and looks a bit scratchy, but he is patient, content with singles and some sharp running between wickets, and when the loose ball comes along, his shot-making is not lacking in style. They confer briefly at the end of each over. Old-timers in pairs dot the picket fence. Lennie Pascoe strolls around the oval in animated discussion; he has put on some weight, Steve Waugh bowled by Colin Barry for 8. Bankstown v Western Suburbs, Bankstown Oval, September 2003. (Jack Egan) Courtesy www.pdfbooksfree.pk One Who Will - Pages 22/4/05 12:10 PM Page 3 The search for Steve Waugh 3 but looks very fit, a little more solid then when in his prime, but no less menacing. After about half an hour the wind dropped and the sun came out. McLauchlan over-pitched and Steve drove him straight back down the ground with brutal efficiency. He was starting to look settled when he tried to drive at Barry and his off stump was knocked out. Two for 19 as the world’s most experienced cricketer trudged off towards the pavilion bearing his name. A couple of overs later Mark edged a good length ball from McLauchlan and was caught at first slip. Three for 19; surprising, but as an old-timer from Wests said, Steve is going to go through a summer of international cricket and he won’t play against fast bowling that’s a lot better than he faced today. What Wests’ captain Michael Clarke thought about this would have been interesting. Aged 22, with a shock of blond hair, Clarke is generally thought to be the next big thing in Australian cricket. In his two one-day internationals to date Clarke had made 37 not out against England and 75 not out against the West Indies. With players like him and the talented Simon Katich around, there are some who think that Steve Waugh, who came into the Australian team in 1985 at the age of twenty, would be doing the right thing if he retired and made a place for a younger player. As I left at about 10.15 to go and look at the house where Stephen and Mark Waugh grew up, ten minutes away in Picnic Point Road, Panania, others were leaving too, but people were still arriving in dribs and drabs. Three skinny kids with an old bat and ball come through the gate. They stop, look briefly at the game, then at the scoreboard, then one of them says, ‘Aw shit.’ Courtesy www.pdfbooksfree.pk One Who Will - Pages 22/4/05 12:10 PM Page 4 Courtesy www.pdfbooksfree.pk One Who Will - Pages 22/4/05 12:10 PM Page 5 2 SCARED AND SHY Waugh’s Test debut Steve Waugh played in 168 Test matches.