Tuesday, August 20, 2002 The most remarkable thing about Mark Waugh's best-selling new biography is its unremarkability. For a bloke who has been there, done that - a century on debut, accused and cleared of corruption, a century of Test matches, accused and cleared again of corruption - Waugh has surprisingly little to say.

Except when it comes to his two passions: his love of a flutter and his loathing of those in the gutter. By the gutter, of course, we mean the media, the people who "criticise you at a drop of a hat" and "don't give you credit when you do well". Who "only see what they want to see". Who "think the world revolves around them and their stories".

Oh, he doesn't mind Peter Roebuck, or good old Phil Wilkins at his hometown Sydney Morning Herald. But as for the rest ...

"The rest I won't say hello to," says Waugh. "I won't give them the time of day. Even now I won't yell at them, shout at them or abuse them, but I won't acknowledge them either. If I'm in a lift with them I'll just stand there and say nothing ... I don't think I hate anything more in my career than dealing with the media."

Well, it would be nice to say the feeling is mutual. Truth is, though, most of us in the media are big Mark Waugh fans. Sure, there are a pernickety few who delight in totting up every scratchy 15 and calling periodically for your head. But, generally speaking, we find the swash of your buckle infinitely preferable to the clean-cut, identikit modern cricketers who keep their noses out of trouble and talk in clichéd cricket-speak. Without wanting to get too emotional about it, we'll miss you when you're gone. And here's 10 reasons why:

1 We love it that instead of putting your head down for an average-boosting 73 not out when the game is meandering towards a dozy draw, you try to reverse-sweep Phil Tufnell from three feet outside leg stump with your eyes shut, one hand behind your back and get bowled.

2 We love it that unlike your big brother - who wears his baggy green to breakfast, bed and the beach - you think chunky green caps are a bit naff, actually, and wouldn't be caught dead in one.

3 We love it that when Matthew Elliott, at Sydney in 1996-97, was on the verge of becoming the first Victorian opener since Ian Redpath to hit a Test century, you inadvertently ploughed straight into the poor sod and wrenched his knee cartilage.

4 We love you because you are Australia's ultimate Pommie-basher. Assuming you make the team this summer, and we pray you will, you'll have played in seven Ashes series and won them all. Only Mark Taylor and Ian Healy, who each won six out of six, come close.

5 We love you not because you named your pet dogs and cats after racehorses - Kingston Town, Jezabeel, Bonecrusher - but because you haven't felt the need to tell us about it 1000 times. (Memo to Funky Miller: we all wet ourselves when we first heard about your dogs Richie and Benaud. But it's just not funny anymore, okay?)

6 We love the fact that the two most smart-alec nicknames of the last 15 years - 'Afghanistan' (the forgotten Waugh) and 'Audi' (after you made four straight blobs in Sri Lanka) - belonged to you.

7 We love it that, unlike certain members of the Australian team, you have resisted the temptation to release nine boring tour diaries chocker with acres of awful poetry and pictures of Stuart MacGill wearing barmy hats.

8 We love it that you are just as likely to do something goose-like whether you're 0 not out or 120. Hence, you have been dismissed 15 times in Tests between 100 and 150 - a feat matched only by Sunil Gavaskar (18) and David Boon (15).

9 We love it that after you and your brother put on 464 against WA in 1990-91, your only worry was your hairdo. As Mike Whitney tells it: "Mark takes his helmet off, walks over to the mirror and wants to make sure his hair is still looking good. He doesn't have a blemish, not even a bead of sweat running down his forehead. Then Stephen comes in, he has sweat pouring out of him, and he's pissed off. He says to Henry [Geoff Lawson]: 'F***, why did you declare? We could have got 600!'"

10 We love it that, even though everyone secretly suspects you're a bit soft, you walloped the West Indies for 173 in a one-day final the afternoon before your date with match-fixing investigators. Forget fronting Larwood and the leg-trap. Forget batting 27 hours at Madras and losing control of your bodily functions. That's real courage, 21st-century style.

These are the things, Audi - can we call you Audi? - that we love and cherish about you.

But we hate the fact that nobody calls you Audi anymore and everyone calls you Junior. We hate it that you never take your helmet off, even when Daniel Vettori is bowling from one end and Chris Harris from the other. We hate it that you refuse to admit that accepting US$4000 of a bookie's money in exchange for weather forecasts - and not thinking to tell Simmo or Tubby or anyone about it - might have been the teeniest, weeniest bit dumb.

However what really irks us is that, after slagging off the media, you now plan to stroll into the Channel 9 commentary box and join us. Partly this annoys us because we like to think there's still a bit of life left in you as a batsman. Mostly it is because we don't fancy having to share a lift with you.

(Mark Waugh: The Biography by James Knight, HarperCollins, $39.95)

Click here for a breakdown of Mark Waugh's Test career

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

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