Steve Waugh is my all-time favourite cricketer. So much so, that sitting in my TV room, I had willed and cajoled him into making that comeback into the Aussie ODI team after being dropped some time before the World Cup of 2003. One last swansong he deserved, I had reasoned to myself, for being one of the best captains, and indeed, at one point of time, one of the better cricketers around.
Alas, the Australians are a different kettle of fish altogether. Emotionless, with practicality oozing from every deed performed and with a severe sense of a lack of regard for any respect for previous annals, the doors, as it transpired later, had been shut on a more permanent basis, in the face of Waugh. In about a year’s time, his test career had been finished off by those same ruthless men at Sydney. The inventor – and the perpetrator – of the slog sweep shot, the in-your-face – and mind – leader – as was evident on a numerous occasions, none lesser than when he and a certain Curtly Ambrose eye-balled and circled each other like they were the hunters and the hunted at the same time – but most importantly, a man who toughened his team to face almost situation on the cricket field, with an attitude that ‘it-can-be-overcome’ was gone.
So why are we barking up the Waugh tree, when the focus should inherently be on the currently simmering situation at the Ferozshah Kotla situation between the two cricketing giants, India and Australia? Simply because there is a connection between the aforesaid and the Border-Gavaskar series.
The tourists have been going through the rough time of it, and help hasn’t been short in coming. First it was Greg Chappell who was offered the role of a double-o-seven spy from the enemy camp. Then, former left arm spinner, Bishen Singh Bedi joined the bandwagon, in a bid to convert Jason Krejza into a, er…Muthiah Muralitharan. Manoj Prabhakar was also invited, but he exhibited his reluctance. Aussie selector, Merv Hughes, was around, mouthing away anything that may sound assisting. And then, for some reason, Steve Waugh, who had been around in the country, was sent an SOS message by the Aussie management. Waugh immediately obliged and spent a good part of the day with the troops. Now, one is not privy to how actually he fit in the scheme of things as an outsider, but in his own words, “did not give any tips as such but just asked them to relax.”
So far, so good. However, the lines that followed give an insight into the fact that old habits, as they say, die hard. Amidst praising the Indian bowlers, and expressing his confidence in the beleaguered Aussie team, he slipped in his deceptive slower one – as was his wont in his heydays as a bowler – and said, “India were outstanding at Mohali. They have indeed set very high standards but I guess the pressure is now on them to keep it going and off Australia’s shoulders.”
One understands that the word ‘pressure’ and cricketers usually go hand-in-glove, but if one looks at this series so far, the legacy of Aussie cricket in the last decade or so has been questioned by the Indian performances in this series. And by this logic, it is easy to deduce that a loss for the tourists at the Kotla may end with an axe for many an Aussie player at best and even see an expulsion of the Aussie skipper from the helm at worst. The extra pressure, if at all, would be on the tourists, yet, in his inimitable style, Waugh has probably continued from where he had left off four years back. With Waugh around, the verbal joust, whether on or off the field, was never a distant possibility, and it did materialise again!
All said and done, it is not only what Waugh’s said, but also about the thinking process of this former great that comes to the fore here. Even during times when adversity stared right into his face, Waugh – and his men – had this tendency of staring back, taking it by its horns and dispelling it away without much ado. For now though, it is Ricky Ponting who would be facing the music, and need to ensure that the Waugh-words are indeed fructified. Down 0-1, and going into a match that would be played on a pitch that would support the slower bowlers more than others, he has no other option!