July 5, 1999
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CRICKET From Bat to Verse The tough talking captain Steve Waugh used every device to inspire his team to victory. Even poetry. By Rohit Brijnath
"Well, here we are at the home of W.G. Grace
Victory always exaggerates a captain's virtues. It is the way of sport. Waugh, we were told, was as humourless as a defrocked priest, unburdened by any gift of inspiration. Yet perhaps we missed something about him. He certainly thinks so, even writing pointedly in his column prior to the final, "Tubby (Mark Taylor) was a great captain but he seems to have become better since he retired." Perhaps too in the mesh of eastern flair and western discipline that is the Australian trademark, in their righteous belief in their ability, we see clearer the flaws of Indian cricket. Indian captains have never been men of daring. Teams surge forward not just on talent and tactical nous but on ideas, however absurd they may appear on initial scrutiny. Waugh, a writer of books on his tours, a photographer of cities he travels, a raiser of funds for a Calcutta home for the children of leprosy patients, is unafraid of ideas. And two that he experimented with these last few months -- not that they were reasons alone for Australia's victory -- give strength to his reputation as a thinking man. If you looked perchance at the back of Waugh's cap at the World Cup, you would have seen a number embossed on it. It read: 90. For long Waugh believed Test cricket (and the baggy green cap) was the Holy Grail, but he knew there were players whose ambitions would end with one-day cricket. He felt it deserved a tradition too, some sense of history, where after matches players would not casually give away their caps. So at the back of every man's cap is a number that denotes where he stands in a lineage of Australian players. For instance, the 90 on Waugh's cap indicates he was the 90th player to play one-day cricket for Australia. Suddenly men like Tom Moody or Michael Bevan or Damien Martyn or Shane Lee, unlikely to play much Test cricket, find a fresh worthiness. No man gives his cap away anymore. The second experiment, had it been mentioned in the Indian dressing room, would have brought a collective sneer. In the West Indies, Waugh approached Dave Misson, a former English teacher turned fitness trainer, and asked that after practice he provide a thought for the day. That the mind should find a similar stimulation to what they gave their bodies. And so when nets ended, and the players gathered, Misson read to them from men like Henry Longfellow: Not in the clamour of the crowded street Not in the shouts and the plaudits of the throng But in ourselves are triumph and defeat Ambitious always, Waugh then pushed for the players' involvement, that they write something, a poem, an inspirational couplet, whatever. Justin Langer, who wrote his own tour diaries, was among the first, writing before the fourth Test in Antigua: The pain of discipline and going the extra yard Is easier to bear than the pain of defeat By the World Cup, it become a pattern, even the young players, unlikely men built more of perspiration, scribbling untidily on scraps of paper. Then before matches, against New Zealand and India, unembarrassed by the throng of hard-nosed, beer-swilling, invective-spewing Aussies around him, a player read out what he hoped would inspire. As Waugh later told The Australian, "Through this (the poems) sometimes the person will bring out something they have not said before, something you would not have thought this person would say, and it lifts the players." Poetry is not going to solve India's cricketing problems, but it points to a willingness to be inventive, to find unusual methods of bonding, qualities absent in the Indian camp. Still, there was so much more for India to learn from Waugh. If you carefully watched the Australians in the final, it was not just coincidental the number of times fielders whipped in the ball to the wicketkeeper, just missing the Pakistani batsmen. It was a plan. Said Waugh later: "I wanted to be in the Pakistanis' faces and I told the team to throw the ball back hard. It's the small things that matter." Small things like Indian batsmen slowing up before centuries, small things like not a single Indian slip fielder capable of taking a catch like Ricky Ponting took in the final. There is too an obvious privilege to play and win for Australia that surpasses any individual desire. The deafening gung-ho quality of Shane Warne and the resolute tight-lippedness of Waugh meant for dissimilar approaches but both men understood fast that in being complementary not contrary stood Australia's best interest. Here team is always first. Post final Waugh would speak about the contribution of his "11 players", but then 10 minutes or so later interjected to say, "I apologise, I want to correct myself, I meant 15 men not 11." And then there is attitude. Waugh called the Indians "passive cricketers", a reflection on both a national culture that is accommodating and a captaincy that treads too softly. At the press conference before the final, told that Wasim Akram had said "my team is the toughest in the world mentally", Waugh responded, "That's worth a laugh." It was, for he added, "We are and the fact that we're the No. 1 Test side proves it." (Being the No. 1 one-day side endorses it.) It is uncanny, but relevant, that all the Australians who glittered had arrived with a point to prove. Waugh that he was no faceless captain, Warne that his career had hit a comma not a fullstop, McGrath that his fire extended beyond Test cricket, Ponting that Jonty Rhodes should like a good Christian make way. Of the 15 Indians only two men, Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly, stepped forward far enough to prove any point. India, like Pakistan, rests on the assumption that natural talent is the final argument to greatness. But Australia's victory was necessary for it demonstrated that other virtues are mandatory. At his final press conference, a journalist asked an astonishingly long-winded question saying, in short, "Steve, through this tournament your team has won but they haven't sledged or been surly or rude, do you think that in future tournaments we can hope to see similar behaviour from ..." He hadn't finished when Waugh answered. "No." The soul of a poet, the bloody mindedness of a prizefighter. Of course, they would win. |
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Sleep
wouldn't come. Indeed, it hadn't for many days. In Manchester, after the miracle against
South Africa, he tossed, he turned, then at 4.30 a.m. gave up and watched highlights of
the match. Today, World Cup final day, ensconced in London's Royal Garden Hotel, he awoke
at 2.30 a.m., the adrenaline flooding his veins. Perhaps it was fortuitous, for this
morning was his turn, to write the poem that would be recited to the team after practice.
And so captain Steve Waugh, man of some steel but also of an invisible soul, sat and
wrote: 
Yes, yes, the very
phrase Australian cricket poet smells of an oxymoron. It is though an unexpected measure
of a complicated man. But wait, we are getting ahead of ourselves. 
