Team plays on
VETERAN CRICKETER MARK WAUGH WILL BE MISSING TWO OLD MATES THIS SUMMER
Mark Waugh says it was a bittersweet experience reuniting with his Fox Cricket colleagues ahead of the coming summer of cricket.
The tight-knit team of former players and pundits suffered a double loss this year, with the sudden and untimely deaths of Shane Warne and Andrew Symonds within three months.
“It’s going to be a very different summer in the commentary box,” says Fox Cricket expert Waugh, who played 128 Test matches and 244 One Day Internationals for Australia between 1988 and 2002.
“Two great Fox Sports commentators and two great mates as well, more importantly. They are guys that the bulk of the commentary team played a lot of cricket with and spent a lot of time with over the years so to lose them both so close together was a big shock to all of us. They are going to be sorely missed, there’s no doubt about it. We will move on, but we will obviously respect them and remember them at certain times during the summer for sure.”
Waugh was in the Test team when the 23-year-old Warne made his inauspicious Test debut in 1992 – and was carted around the Sydney Cricket Ground, finishing with figures of 1-150. He says he struggles to pick just one defining memory of the spin wizard with whom he was a teammate in one of the most dominant outfits ever to have played the game.
“I remember his first Test
Match in Sydney where he didn’t have a lot of success but he went on to become one of the greatest bowlers of all time,” Waugh says.
“There are lots of great memories on the field, we had a lot of success with that team through the era that Shane was playing and lots of good fun off the field.”
Waugh says the game has changed a lot since he played his last international game two decades ago – and not just on the field. He admits to being a bit perplexed by the current playerpower movement that recently led to Netball Australia parting ways with sponsor Hancock Prospecting and also saw Australian Test and ODI cricket captain Pat Cummins decline to appear in any promotional material for then sponsor Alinta Energy, citing concerns over fossil fuels and climate change. The $40m partnership between the energy company and Cricket Australia ended not long afterwards.
“In our day, we just played the game,” says Waugh. “We didn’t even think about who was sponsoring us, or who was coaching us, we just got on with the job. But times have changed and there is much more awareness about all these sorts of things with social media and all the advertising. I’m not going to sit here and say who’s right or wrong but put it this way – it’s not easy to get good sponsorship in sport so the players have to be very careful who they alienate as far as sponsors are concerned.”
As for on- field action this summer, Waugh doesn’t think the Australian team underperforming in the recent T20 World Cup on home soil and failing to reach the finals will have much effect on the games to come. The ODI series against England kicks off in Adelaide tomorrow, and the visitors and will be flying high after becoming the first team to hold the T20 and 50-over World Cups at the same time at the weekend.
“It’s going to be good series,” says Waugh. “England is a very, very good one day side and Australia are the same. Obviously Aaron Finch won’t be there – he has announced his retirement from 50-over cricket so Pat Cummins will captain the side and you’d expect with two quality teams there is not going to be too much between them.”
Waugh says he expects the home side to win the two-Test series against the West Indies, but the three-match series against South Africa is looming as the clash of the summer. The home side is the top ranked Test team with the visitors in third place.
“It doesn’t get much better than that,” he says of the series that begins at the Gabba on December 17, before the Boxing Day and New Year Tests in Melbourne and Sydney respectively.
“I think if you look at South Africa, their bowling is as good as anything going around world cricket at the moment – there’s Nortje and Rabada and Ngidi and … Maharaj is a good spinner.
“The area that South Africa might struggle in – and we have seen this in recent times – is the batting.
“I think that’s going to be an issue for South Africa in Australia on the fast, bouncy pitches. I’d expect Australia to win that series but I think it’s going to be a series dominated by the quick bowlers.”
Despite a relatively new captain in Cummins and coach in Andrew MacDonald, Waugh says he can’t see weaknesses in the Australian side, with the possible exception of who is the best option to open the batting with David Warner.
“The batting is pretty strong and then you have the great fast bowlers in Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood – and to have someone like Scott Boland back them up shows you what depth the Australian bowlers have.”
In our day, we just played the game … we just got on with the job