Sir Curtly Ambrose has explained how he “didn’t hear” the initial comment from Steve Waugh that led to an infamous confrontation between the pair during the 1995 West Indies-Australia Test match at Port of Spain.

Ambrose had to be restrained from getting close to Waugh by his West Indies teammates, and has previously discussed how he wanted to “knock him out”, without ever going into too much detail over what Waugh said to spark his fury.

Asked why he had chosen to keep his counsel on that detail of the matter on The Grade Cricketer podcast, Ambrose explained that it was, in part, because he was only made aware of Waugh’s initial comment after a teammate relayed to verbal barb to him.

“It was a pitch with a lot of grass on it,” said Ambrose. “It was a difficult pitch to bat on. It was conducive to fast bowling, and I was really on top of the Australians. Steve Waugh got 60-odd in the first innings and he played very well. On a normal day that could have been 150. But he was struggling, playing and missing a lot and he got frustrated. One of my teammates told me as I was walking back, because I’d given him a stare, and then I go back to my mark, and one of my teammates told me ‘Steve Waugh said to “Eff off”, or “Eff off and get back to my mark”, or something along those lines. But honestly I didn’t hear him.”

It was only after the interval that Ambrose’s anger bubbled over. “After the break, I bowled at him again and he kept missing. So as I follow through, something snapped in me” he said. “I asked him the question, ‘Did you swear at me?’ And he didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no, he just said “I can say whatever I want to say” and that to me was a yes. And that’s when all hell broke loose. And I said to him, ‘I don’t have to play cricket, I have no career left, I will knock you out right here and now. And if they ban me, I don’t really care.’ But of course I didn’t say it that gently, there were a few expletives in between. I was really heated.”

According to Ambrose, there was no lingering bad blood between the pair. Waugh has also spoken about how Ambrose’s silence was often worse than his sledging.

“To be quite honest, that started right there and ended right there,” Ambrose said. “Steve Waugh and I never spoke about it. I met him a couple of times after and we never spoke about it. Only guys like you and the media and all the cricketing people will ask about it. We never spoke about it ever. We never lost our mutual respect.”
————

Ambrose recounted the story of how Waugh ended up writing the foreword to his autobiography. “As a matter of fact, when I did my book, the guy who wrote my book for me, Richard, was saying ‘We can get the legendary Richie Benaud to do the foreword’. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Richie Benaud, I think he’s one of the greatest commentators ever. And I said ‘You know what would be a nice touch? To ask Steve Waugh to do it, because of our rivalry. And Richard was asking me ‘Do you think he’ll do it?’ [I said] ‘We won’t know until we ask.’ So Richard reached out to him, and he readily agreed to write the foreword. No questions asked. And everything that he wrote, I put it in the book. Never changed a word. We still have that mutual respect. But honestly, on that particular moment, I really wanted to knock him out.”

West Indies won the Test by nine wickets to level the series at 1-1, with Ambrose taking match figures of 9-65 in the game. However, Waugh had the last laugh, scoring a memorable double hundred in the decider to inflict the West Indies’ first series defeat since 1980.