by Chris Ryan
Wednesday, September 5, 2001

The effervescent, ambitious captain of a team that loves playing and thrives on winning was nowhere to be seen when the Australians arrived home last Thursday. Instead, a world-weary 36-year-old with a pronounced limp hobbled off the plane, grumbling that three months is too long to be away and tour matches are "a waste of time".

"I think in future," Steve Waugh went on, "some of the county games are not needed." Crikey. What would he have said if Australia had lost 4-1?

It's enough to make you yearn for the days of Tubby and AB, when Australian captains pontificated about batting averages and field placings. Most of Waugh's ideas - abolish nightwatchmen, outlaw runners - are harmless enough, and treated with due deference by the authorities (ie they are politely ignored). But to hell with politeness. His latest brainwave is an abomination.

One of the few black marks against Waugh's side is that hardly any English schoolchildren were able to gape at their idols in the flesh, to spend a summer's day slurping ice-creams and swapping autographs. How many kids fell for cricket after watching Lindsay Hassett's 1953 Australians, when 25,000 packed Swansea for the first two days against Glamorgan? Or after seeing Richie Benaud belt 11 sixes in under two hours at Scarborough that same summer?

It is hard to believe Waugh's side wooed too many. Your only real chance of glimpsing them was on TV or at a Test ground, which lacks the magic of watching the Greatest Team On Earth play in your own backyard. Waugh's men played only 11 first-class matches: four fewer than in 1997, barely half as many as in 1993, and precisely one-third as many as that 1953 side, who had the added burden of travelling by ship. What's more, they struck strictly to the cream-tea-and-cake-circuit: Arundel, Worcester, Hove, Taunton, Lord's. Has cricket's tough guy finally gone soft?

He certainly seems to have lost the romance in his veins of a couple of years ago, when he exhorted his troops to wear Trumper-style baggy green skull caps. No flab in tour itineraries means no flab in tour parties. Never again will England send three over-the-fence spinners to Australia, as they did in 1982-83 with Hemmings, Marks and Miller, only for Australia to retaliate in 1985 with Holland, Matthews and Bennett. Take away the Murray Bennetts and you eat away at cricket's soul.

No place either for an Ian Quick, a Ray Phillips or a Wayne Holdsworth: Australians picked for Ashes tours who never played a Test. Nor for Russell Q Cake, who thrashed 108 for Combined Universities against Border's 1993 Australians and boldly announced he could read Shane Warne. He only played because John Crawley was at a graduation ceremony, but what England would have done for a slice of RQ Cake this summer.

The matches Waugh would rather be rid of have produced some extraordinary moments. Everyone thinks back to 721 in a day at Southend in 1948. But what about Border's four straight hundreds in 1985? Or John Wright's 144 out of 218 - next best score 20 - for Derbyshire in 1981? Or 19-year-old freshman Mike Brearley's 73 and 89, batting at No. 9 and keeping wicket, for Cambridge in 1961?

The last time an Australian side went undefeated by the counties in first-class matches was 16 years ago. True, they have lost much of their lustre since the counties started keeping their stars in the stable, but they remain the highlight of every county fan's season. Who remembers a Norwich Union League victory two weeks later? The fact is Australia should play more first-class matches, not fewer, next time round. Eighteen - well short of the 33 in Hassett's day - seems fair.

Waugh is getting old, has a family and wants to cut back his cricket. So why not step off the one-day merry-go-round and let Warne show the world what a wondrous captain he could be? But sorry, English tour matches are to be cherished and fought for. Australian cricket owes you an enormous debt, Steve Waugh. But the game is still bigger than you.

Chris Ryan is managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and a former Darwin correspondent of the Melbourne Age.

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