Two decades on, Waugh's last-ball century completes his perfect day
SOURCE:ABC Australia|BY:Nick Campton
With one ball remaining on day two of the fifth Ashes Test in 2003, Steve Waugh stared down a century and his own cricketing mortality before securing one of the most famous centuries of his storied career.
Australia lost the Test match, that's important to remember.
They didn't just lose either. They got belted. England won the fifth Test of the 2002-03 Ashes series by 225 runs, their biggest win in terms of runs in almost 20 years and denied Australia an Ashes whitewash in the process.
But the result didn't really matter then and matters even less now. It's a historical footnote, a pub trivia stat, a bit of trainspotting to deploy on a lazy summer day to one of the cricket tragics in your life.
The memory of this Test and the shadow it casts in the Australian sporting mythos goes beyond winning and losing. Given the excellence the public demands from the Australian Test side, that doesn't happen very often.
But when Steve Waugh, on 98 not out, faced down the final ball of day two and his own cricketing mortality and smashed both to the boundary to send the SCG and the nation to nirvana 23 years ago today, he left us with little other choice.
Waugh helped create a world where winning was not everything to Australian cricket, it was the only thing. But bask in the memory of what he calls his perfect day and it's a rare moment where the result was nothing at all.
The art of Waugh
A game involving Steve Waugh where winning doesn't feel important is a funny thing to imagine given he was one of the driving forces behind Australia's brutal-minded conquest of the cricketing world through the 90s and into the turn of the century, first as its top batter and eventually as its captain and figurehead.
Australian cricket moulded itself around his ruthlessness and his absolute focus on victory. His motto was "never say die" and he meant it.
Australia might have had better bats before or since and Shane Warne was the best player on the team, but Waugh was the best competitor, the best fighter, the one who wanted to win the most and therefore did.
The ultimate heights were reached after Waugh succeeded Mark Taylor as captain in 1999. After a slow start, they won that year's World Cup, which was the making him as a leader, and dominated the rest of ODI cricket at a time when that really meant something.
As Australian captain, Waugh oversaw an age of prosperity like no other. (Getty Images: Neal Simpson)
At one point, they won 16 Tests in a row, a record that has been equalled (only by Australia, mind, under his direct successor Ricky Ponting and featuring a score of players raised under Waugh's tutelage) but might never be beaten.
Waugh and company would never weep because there were no more worlds to conquer - there was always another match, another series, another battle worth fighting and therefore worth winning. They won everywhere except India, which ate at Waugh and probably still does.
Along the way, Waugh became larger than life and a national icon, transcending the game he played to become the avatar of the Australian perception of sporting greatness.
As his team brought the cricket world to heel, Waugh became the hero of a legend we told each other over and over again as we consumed the tour diaries, the commemorative videos and the memorabilia Channel Nine flogged every summer.
Waugh's own philosophy revolved around maximum effort but because that effort resulted in such glories he became Australia's secular patron saint of victory and the faithful grew to worship the triumphs.
Time comes for Tugga
Time passed and Waugh got older. The teammates he came up with started to vanish, replaced by players who came of age during the great advance, then by players who knew nothing but the golden age and were forged in its merciless fires.
Age started to get to him. Waugh didn't score a century through the 2001-02 home summer, or on a subsequent tour to South Africa. Australia didn't lose a series along the way – they barely lost a match – but the ruthless edge Waugh had helped hammer into reality started to consume him.
When there was more winning to be done, there was no room for sentiment, no time for a long goodbye for anyone, not even Waugh. It started to feel like he'd used up all the perfect.
Despite being Australia's second-most capped ODI player and second-highest scorer in the format, Waugh was overlooked for the 2003 World Cup train-on squad and it seemed like a message.
By 2002, Waugh's place in the Test side had come into question. (Getty Images: Mark Dadswell)
Ahead of a pre-Ashes series against Pakistan, all the talk was about Waugh and his twin brother Mark, who was enduring a similarly torrid run of form.
Steve hit 103 not out in the third Test to ensure his career would see another sunrise. Mark couldn't find his grace one more time, and never played for Australia again.
The new dawn was coming and Waugh was being counted as yesterday's man. He was already the last active player who debuted in the 1980s and he won his first Test cap a full seven years before Warne, the team's second-longest tenured player.
Waugh hung on for the Ashes but hanging on is really the word for it. The media went into a frenzy calling for his retirement – the kind ones said it would preserve his dignity, the others simply saw the chance to tear down an idol and relished it.
After two Tests, in which he scored a combined 53 runs in three knocks amid two crushing Australian victories, the selectors released a statement that Waugh had their full support – to the end of the series, but with no guarantees of what came beyond.
Waugh's best days seemed behind him as he approached his 38th birthday. (Getty Images: Sean Garnsworthy )
Waugh hit 53 in the third Test at the WACA and 77 on Boxing Day but the sounds only grew louder, even as Australia cruised to two more wins to wrap up the series.
But merely wrapping up a series was not enough, not in this new world. Waugh's scores were good, but only greatness would do now.
It would be ruthless to force Waugh into retirement but Australian cricket was ready to do it because, under Waugh, utter ruthlessness in pursuit of victory had become part of the deal.
Waugh faced the press before the match and was peppered with questions about his future. One journalist asked him what was the defining moment of his career. Waugh said he hoped it hadn't happened yet.
A perfect day
Waugh came to the crease on day two at 3-50 chasing 362 and that helped. Waugh always said he felt most comfortable when the team needed him the most, finding it easier to bat under pressure as opposed to coming in and hitting quick runs to add to an already mammoth total.
From the start, things felt different to his recent knocks, which meant it felt the same as it used to.
Waugh has said in many interviews since that, for the first time in a while, he stopped worrying about tomorrow and started playing for today, and it showed.
The shadows grew longer. Waugh was on 47 at the final drinks break. Radio host Andrew Denton had won an auction that gave him the chance to act as Australia's water boy on the day and in the middle he asked Waugh how he was feeling. Waugh just said he was enjoying himself.
His 50 came off just 61 balls in stylish fashion and shortly thereafter he became just the third player in history to surpass 10,000 Test runs, a reminder of his standing in the sport he had conquered.
Waugh's success led to remarkable devotion from the Australian sporting public. (Getty Images: Chris McGrath)
Wickets fell around Waugh until he was joined by Adam Gilchrist and they turned up the heat in the final hour. At 5:45pm Waugh was on 65 before a late flurry ensued. Channel Nine announced they'd delay the news until Waugh either tonned up or got out which, at the time, was the closest Australia could get to something truly stopping the nation.
Gilchrist thought the day was done at the end of Matthew Hoggard's last over – he only realised his mistake when the crowd rose as he left the last delivery, ensuring Waugh would take the strike.
At 6:40pm English spinner Richard Dawson took the ball for the final over of play. Waugh was on strike and unbeaten on 95. During the change of ends, England keeper Alec Stewart asked Waugh: "Do you write your own scripts now?"
The 42,000-strong crowd chanted his name, willing the great champion of the age to do it one more time, to push back the end just a little bit, to hold on for one more day.
The first was a dot, then Waugh sliced one through cover and tried to run four but could only manage three. He says now that after that shot he'd accepted it wouldn't happen and resigned himself to a long night two runs short.
But England captain Nasser Hussain didn't bring his field up, explaining later he hoped the pressure of the situation would get to Waugh if they were able to get him back on strike and chasing two on the final ball of the day.
Gilchrist knocked an easy single and Waugh had one chance. Hussain turned the screws, taking an age to set his field and chatting long to Dawson, letting every available second sit on Waugh in an effort to have the emotion and spectacle of the moment crush him.
But Waugh would not be broken. He wiped his brow with the red handkerchief he always wore and took guard. He looked down at the pitch and saw a few strands of red on the ground. Waugh took it as a good omen.
Dawson threw up a quicker ball, Waugh trusted the old reflexes and he slapped one through cover for four, and as it raced away to the boundary the day really was perfect.
Gilchrist later said he wanted to stay in the middle with Waugh forever and, when he did walk off, he said he felt like he'd scored 300 himself.
Almost the entire England side went to shake Waugh's hand and Hussain gathered his players before they went into the sheds and told them never to forget the moment, even if it wasn't their moment.
Waugh saluted the crowd as he left the field, because he felt like they were part of it, and the faithful stayed for an hour after play ended, calling Waugh out to the balcony again and again.
After they left, they danced in the streets, mingled with the punters who stormed up to the SCG as word spread that Tugga was getting close, that it was really happening.
So many people wanted to share it together and Taylor tells a great story about those that were inside waving their tickets aloft as proof they were there and didn't just see it happen, but lived this day with Australia's hero.
When Waugh entered the sheds he acted as if it was any other match. Everyone else was hooting and hollering but not Waugh. He slumped down, totally exhausted.
After a while, his family came in, shortly before prime minister John Howard popped by to offer his congratulations. Waugh's father, Rodger, sat beside him and his daughter Rosie told him: "Dad, when you hit that last one, my heart felt funny."
A prize beyond victory
Waugh had earned a tomorrow but the following day he didn't score another run. He nicked off to Mark Butcher at second slip five balls into the morning and England rocketed to an easy win on the back of Michael Vaughan's 183 in the second innings.
But the golden moment of the Test goes beyond the result. Waugh won the right to be the master of his cricketing fate again, and the nation had a priceless memory of his defiance and will and still prodigious abilities.
His century was a prize beyond value, a rare moment when sentiment and emotion and the things we felt together were more important than triumph or defeat.
Waugh last Ashes century might be his most iconic. (Getty Images: Nick Wilson)
During the great advance to the top of the cricketing mountain, there was no room for such sentimentality.
Waugh's teams ran on the scent of victory and everything that didn't directly contribute to that had to be carved out.
This knock from Waugh is perhaps the only exception to that ruthlessness, the one time when how something felt mattered more than the ambition to be great.
Waugh played on for another year, hitting another three centuries in the process. His last came against Bangladesh in Cairns, if you want to win a bar-room bet this summer.
He retired after the corresponding Test a year later, hitting 80 against India in his final dig as Australia drew a match better remembered for Sachin Tendulkar's breathtaking unbeaten 241. The farewell summer was emotional, but it didn't have a perfect day.
Waugh retired with the most Test caps of any player in history and the most centuries of any Australian. His low profile since only bolsters that larger-than-life status and he exists as a symbol of an era as much as a man.
Two decades later, it's easy to while away a summer day talking about his greatest knocks, like that 200 against the West Indies in 1995 or the century in both innings at Manchester in 1997 or even the first century at Headingley in 1989, the one that really got him started.
You'll talk a lot about winning, because that’s what Steve Waugh did, but eventually it will come back to that day at the SCG and what happened on the last ball. It might even start there.
Because even for Australia's ultimate winner, sometimes the scoreline doesn't matter. Winning feels great, but some things are greater, and sometimes all a day needs to be perfect is the promise of another.