http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Stephen-Rodger-Waugh-c91216 - A Legend of the game
He was hard as a http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Minal-Mahesh-Patel-c76331, uncompromising and a true fighter. He was a cool and calculating cricketer who reshaped his game according to need of the time. He never compromised himself, never beaten, never satisfied; Steve Waugh is one of the all time legends
of cricket.
Waugh was a fantastic middle-order batsman, strong on both sides of the wicket, powerful on both front and back foot and a magnificent square cutter of the ball. Along with fine batting skills, he was a sharp and vibrant fielder with safe pair of hands.
While he proved his worth with the bat, he was phenomenal medium-pace bowler with a knack of providing key breakthroughs to his side.
The New South Wales-born cricketer came on to scene in 1985, making his Test debut against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750 in the boxing-day Test. It was not an impressive outing for Waugh, as he could only manage to collect 13 and 5 respectively.
Yet, it was a birth of a cricketing great as he remained a great performance for Australia over the next many years. His first Test century came in the Headingley Test of the 1989 Ashes series when he smashed unbeaten 177 runs, steering his team to a handsome
210-run win.
Yet, an unbeaten 157-run-kncok against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/England-c56013 in the fourth Test which was played at Headingley from July 22 to July 26, 1993, confirmed his place among the best batsmen, the world has ever produced.
Waugh made his name as a batsman but he engineered a number of Australian triumphs with his calculated medium-pace bowling. It was not his excellent batting, bowling or fielding which made him one of the legends of the game but it was his temperament, leadership
skills and pragmatic attitude towards his sport that helped him registered his name in the history.
As he was a gutsy batsman who continued to play match-winning knocks throughout his career, his outstanding run pushed the cricket gurus to rate him as one of the best batsmen alongside http://www.senore.com/Cricket/SR-Tendulkar-c2556.
In 1999, he was given the responsibility to lead http://www.senore.com/Cricket/ICC-World-Cup-2011-c100625 World Cup 1999, Waugh was playing well as ever but the doubts remained there over his captaincy, as he was not able to lift the side in the initial
days of his leadership.
It was an ordinary performance by the Aussies in the first round of the mega event and the side was just one game away from being elimination when the skipper took the responsibility on his shoulders.
Who can forget two successive games against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/South-Africa-c757 when the Kangaroos had to win the first game in order to qualify for the semi-final. The chins were down as the side was struggling while chasing South Africa mighty target of 272. Yet, the skipper
stood up and guided the side to a nail-biting success by hitting an unbeaten innings of 120.
Waugh cleared all the concerns over his captaincy, and subsequently lifted the coveted World Cup trophy. He is still the most successful captain among the Australia’s skippers who led the side in more than 10 Tests. In 57 matches under his command, the Aussies
emerged as the winners on 41 occasions.
Waugh’s amazing international career came to an end in 2004 when he decided to quit after representing Australia in 168 Tests and 325 One Day Internationals (ODI), scoring 10927 and 7569 runs in both versions of the game respectively.
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