New Delhi, Nov 30: Whatever be the result of the four-Test cricket series between Australia and India beginning on December 4 in Brisbane, this much is sure: it has already acquired the tag `historic`, long before a single ball has been bowled or struck. The contests will go down in history as Steve Waugh`s farewell series. With a perfect sense of timing — something that has eluded some of the greatest peformers in sport — Waugh announced the other day that the fourth Test match against India at Sydney, from January 2 to 6, would be his last. Given how much emotional investment the Australian captain had in returning to India late in 2004 to conquer what he calls "The Last Frontier", his decision did come as a surprise to many cricket-lovers and critics, particularly in India. But then, like everything else he has done in a remarkable career, the timing of Waugh`s departure is wonderfully well-reasoned. At 38, after a record 164 Test appearances in which he has scored 10,660 runs with 32 centuries, the most successful captain in Test history — 40 victories from 53 matches — has decided to say goodbye at his home ground with a lot of fans asking "Why?" rather than "Why Not?" Few retirements in the history of cricket have triggered the sort of emotional response Waugh`s announcement has done. Then again, few modern athletes have managed to make quite as big an impact on the world of sport, as well as in areas well beyond its strictly defined boundaries, as did Waugh. He brought to the game a winning mix of noble old-fashioned values and the no-holds-barred aggression that has characterised his generation of players. If it took the senior of the Waugh twins some time to establish himself as a batsman of substance in the Australian team — his first Test century came only in his 27th Test, at Leeds against England — then by the time he made that unforgettable 200 in Jamaica in May 1995 in an epoch-making series that saw Australia stop the seemingly invincible West Indians and rewrite power equations in the game, Waugh was very much at the top of his game. In the larger context, the success he achieved in that series was significant simply because it was character-revealing. It marked him out as an extraordinary competitor who could dig deeper than anyone else in his sport in a moment of crisis and finally deliver in style, no matter that as a batsman Waugh`s gifts did not compare favourably with those of a Sachin Tendulkar or a Brian Lara.
Time after time, some of the finest bowlers firing away at their best seemed to lose heart at the very sight of Waugh walking down the pavilion steps even if the score happened to read 35-3 or 48-4. Among the players of his generation, Waugh was cricket`s greatest firefighter, one who has managed to douse the flames that have threatened to reduce Australian cricketing ambitions and fortunes more often than any of his team-mates. This apart, an inspiring aspect of the Waugh story is the way he grew into his roles at different points in his career, first as a dependable batsman who loved the big challenges and then as a courageous, confident and perceptive leader of men. Meanwhile, even before he took over as captain, he started turning his attention beyond the playfield to the larger issues of life as he began to support a charity organisation in Kolkata that works for the uplift of children of leprosy victims. Few of sport`s multi-millionaire champions ever care to cast their eyes on life`s underclass losers. But, then, Stephen Rodger Waugh is different, a pure one-off in modern cricket. He will be missed by fans everywhere in the cricket playing world