Perhaps more than anyone, Steve Waugh was responsible for shaping the way modern Test cricket is played. In the 2003 Wisden, Simon Barnes explained why he was one of the most influential players in the history of the game.
Never has a cricketer had so appropriate a surname. But let us understand that aright. Steve Waugh’s cricketing warfare has never been a matter of hatred, jingoism and senseless aggression, any more than a matter of chivalry, romance and the search for personal glory.
No. Waugh’s wars have been about the most efficient possible means of despatching the enemy. They are about a clear understanding of the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses, and an equally uncluttered understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of his own side. Sometimes the results are spectacular, but that is by the way. Spectacle is a by-product of a hard head, clear vision, an analytical mind and an impersonal lust for victory.
It is not so much a tactic as an emphasis: when in doubt, attack. Not for fun – as a thought-out ploy. As a team policy. Speed is not self-indulgence but duty. The idea is to win every session of every Test match, and mostly that is what Australia have been doing. If things go amiss, there is always the captain to come in later in the order. The only disappointment in Waugh’s later career is that there have been so few occasions when he has been required to do his one-man rescue act.
The tactic of speed has been enthralling, but Waugh did not do it to enthral. He did it to enslave. There was an awful lot of guff talked about “brighter cricket” in the 1960s: if that was brighter cricket, what would audiences of 40 years back have made of the Australian speed machine? Waugh doesn’t employ the tactic to make cricket brighter. But – and it is an aspect of his greatness – he didn’t allow his prejudice against mere entertainment to muddle his thinking. In its intention, the Australian stroke-making is as flamboyant as an atom bomb.
The definitive treatise on warfare as a science of destruction rather than a chivalric art was written by Karl von Clausewitz in Napoleonic times. It is called On War. If a similarly hard-nosed book were to be written on cricket, the same title could be used. With a small adjustment to the spelling.
READ MORE ALMANACK ARTICLES
