Steve Waugh, while in conversation with Michael Atherton on Sky Sports Cricket, recalled how his bowling kept him in the Australia Test team before he scored first Test hundred.
After making his Test debut in 1985, Waugh had to wait for almost four years and 26 matches before getting his first Test hundred. He already had two Test five-fors before his first century arrived against England in 1989.
“I think I’ve always been a person who tries to find my own way to do things,” he said. “Even as a captain, I didn’t listen to other people. If I made a mistake, I wanted it to be an original mistake, I didn’t want it to be someone else’s mistake.
“I think it’s both [a strength and a weakness], a bit of stubbornness and trying to find your way. But I knew, eventually, I’ll get it right and it did take me a few years. I probably saved myself those days with my bowling – picked three [two] five-fors before I scored a Test match hundred. So my bowling was pretty good and I was handy in the field.”
[breakout id=”0″][/breakout]
Waugh was labelled “the best all-rounder in the world” by Bill Lawry early in his career, and memorably got one over on Viv Richards at The Gabba in 1988, but in his view it was only the presence of “really good selectors”, especially Laurie Sawle, helped him keep his spot. He conceded that those were tough times for him.
“I think, luckily, back in those days, we had really good selectors with Laurie Sawle, who saw the potential in a lot of players and stuck with them. Maybe that was the only option as there wasn’t a lot of depth at that time so I was lucky that was the case. But yeah, there were tough times early on.”
Eventually, the former Australia captain went on to score 32 Test hundreds in a career spanning over 19 years, but picked up only 52 wickets from the date of his first Test ton onwards. By then, in a way, his bowling had already done its job, ensuring one of Australia’s greatest Test cricketers wasn’t discarded early.
