Hits And Misses

The Waugh Principle

For athletes, retirement is a thorny issue. They don’t like being askedabout it, for usually it's a not-so-subtle hint that age might be becoming animpediment to their skills, that they might be over the hill, that they don'tbelong to the dog-eat-dog world of top-flight sport. It’s an ego thing,really.

Athletes are stubborn artistes, who hate it when they are patronized orwhen terms are dictated to them. And they don’t come more stubborn thanStephen Rodger Waugh, who has been hounded by probings over his retirement allthrough the Ashes series.

Shunted out of Australia’s one-day side a year ago, an ordinary batting runmeant his Test spot too was in jeopardy. That he was captain of the best team inthe world, that under his leadership the side had racked up an enviable Testrecord (33 wins, 7 losses, 5 draws), that for many people he was the batsman tosummon if their life was on the line would have held weight with selectors of,perhaps, all other Test-playing nations. Not the Australian bunch, though, whichacknowledged these towering achievements, but also said that this was the past.Waugh had been fragile with the bat and age wasn’t on his side.

Now, they were looking ahead, to form a nucleus that would serve Australiafor the next four to five years, and that meant choosing a captain from the bestsix batters in Australia. If Waugh’s batting was fraying and nearing itsexpiry date, as Waugh’s numbers and demeanour in the middle indeed suggested,they would like to ring in the changes now. Young, talented batsmen like MartinLove and Simon Katich were make strong cases for selection.

Before the fourth Test at Melbourne, the selectors spelled out theirintentions. They gave Waugh two Tests to back his contention that he was amongthe best six batters in the country. And if he couldn’t, he would be castaside. The die had been cast. It was a beautiful sub-plot to the lopsided Ashesseries.

Waugh responded. In the Melbourne Test, which his side won with raredifficulty, he scored 77 and 14. They were essays in contrast. The first one wasclose to vintage Waugh -- plucky, resolute and effective. In the second, whenthe Aussies were chasing a modest 106 for victory, Waugh looked all at seaagainst a raging Steve Harmison, chancing his arm till his luck ran out. Thedoubts lingered. The ball was still in the selectors' court. It would take aspecial knock from Waugh to win it back.

Waugh is a stubborn man, never shying away from a challenge. He is also oneof the rare modern cricketers with a great sense of occasion and a goodunderstanding of history. And in the fifth Test at Sydney, he rose to theoccasion and rewrote the history books. Coming in with Australia tottering at56-3, chasing England’s first innings score of 362, Waugh walked briskly outin the middle, even before Justin Langer, the batsman dismissed, was halfwaythrough his long walk back. He defended his wicket till tea.

In the new session, he began to open up, playing freely square on either sideof the wicket. Firm backfoot pushes through the covers, fluent flicks, gentlenudges. Doubt had left town. "Sometimes you know it's going to be your day.I was seeing the ball so well. I just thought today was going to be my day. Ithought I had a chance all day of getting a hundred," he would later say.

The momentous occasion wasn’t lost on the 41,931 people present at theSydney Cricket Ground, who cheered on every run scored by the home boy. 50 cameand went. When he passed 69, he became the third batsman in the history ofcricket to score 10,000 runs.

As the day wore on, it seemed that he had resignedhimself to the fact that he wouldn’t get to his century that day. But after abrief blitz, it was again there for the taking. And he took it. On the last ballof the day, on 98, Waugh slammed Richard Dawson to the cover fence for his 29^thcentury, equalling the great Don Bradman for hundreds scored. He would have thelast word on his future.

Waugh wasn’t just playing for his Test future. He was also playing to provehis belief that he wasn’t resting on laurels from the past but that he hadearned his place in the side by virtue of being one of the best six batters inthe country. He was playing to heal his pride that had been bruised by his axingfrom the one-day squad and persistent question marks over his Test form.

Questioned about his future in the game, Waugh said: "I've always said itwas in my control what happens. I feel I am playing the way I did when I was 19-years-old, going out and having fun and playing shots. I've certainly enjoyedthe way I've played the last three or four innings. There's certainly atemptation to go on."

So, where does he go from here? To say that Waugh has turned his batting formaround with these two knocks would be hasty and foolhardy. A final World Cupappearance is a very long shot (possible only if injuries take their toll on theAustralian squad). A few months ago, Waugh talked about his desire to scale that‘final frontier’, of winning a Test series in India. That’s September2004, almost two years down the line.

Australia’s next port of call is WestIndies (in April). But given the emotional experience of Sydney, it might betempting to stop. Said Waugh: "I'm not sure what's going to happen. I'lljust relax for one or two days, have a good think about it, get away from thecricket scene and cricket people and be with the family and friends, and talkthrough it. I'll go through the pros and cons and weigh it up, and just see whatthe right decision is. And hopefully make that right decision." Hopefully,on his terms.

The stranglehold of business and commerce over sport continues to increase bythe day. It manifests itself in numerous ways, sometimes subtle, sometimesin-your-face. Athletes look like walking billboards. At times, their sartorialmakeup is truly absurd and downright insulting to basic sporting values -- forinstance, a cricket ignoramus might be forgiven for believing that Indiancricketers represent a team called Sahara!

Match schedules are invariablydictated by the demands of TV. And the organisers seem to be saying: forgetrespect or consideration for players, seedings and the sport, let’s rack upthe TRPs. Translated into action, this means, let’s always put AnnaKournikova on the show courts.

Even as the ICC, BCCI and the Indian cricketers play, in what’s now become,their periodic game of poker over the issue of commercial contracts, there’sno getting away from one hard fact: money has sport in a vice-like grip. It’sa marriage of convenience. They need each other, though not necessarily for thepurest of reasons. And like marriages of convenience, this alliance often straysinto conflict-laden territory, where solutions are found through words like ‘compromise’and ‘accommodating’. And, invariably, it’s the wads that come out thewinner -- sadly, at some cost to sport.

Late last year, this unsavoury alliance claimed another victim: the BelgianGrand Prix -- one of the 17 races on the annual Formula 1 (F1) calendar. Belgiumdecided to ban tobacco advertising from this year on (jumping the 2006 ban datedecided by other countries that make up the European Union), and therefore the10 F1 teams decided to give it a skip.

Tobacco companies are the biggest moneyspenders in F1, which is a big-budget sport. With Belgium ignoring theirinterests, the teams, ostensibly under polite pressure from their tobaccopatrons, decided to boycott Belgium.

It’s a huge loss for F1. Race tracks are one of the key elements that gointo good, enjoyable racing. Some tracks facilitate great racing, some don’t.Therein lies the tragedy. The Spa-Francorchamps circuit, host to the BelgianGrand Prix, is a great racing track, one of the few genuine driver circuitsleft. Overriding safety and commercial considerations have turned most racetracks into the very anathema of racing: speeds have fallen, overtakingopportunities are far and few, and races are often won and lost through pitstrategy.

Spa, though, still packs plenty of punch, more than any other race track onthe F1 calendar. Nestled in the Belgian Ardennes, Spa is a long lap that windsthrough dense forests before hitting the streets of Francorchamps village. Thetrack is scenic, fast and wide, with adequate space for two to three cars to rubwheels. It’s a beautiful blend of long straights, challenging corners andchicanes.

Says Canadian driver Jacques Villeneuve: "Spa is one of the lasthigh-speed circuits left. It’s a very long lap, but you really feel likeyou're going somewhere. It's got a good rhythm and it follows the layout of theland. You turn because there's a mountain, so there's a reason for the layout.It's not like most modern tracks, which are like parking lots that you put conesaround to create as many corners as you can with no logic or rhythm. This onehas both. It's like you're driving to your house in the mountains."

And, Spa has Eau Rouge -- the ultimate piece of tarmac in motor racing.Universally acknowledged by drivers as the most challenging -- and therefore,the most enjoyable -- drive on the F1 calendar, Eau Rouge calls for a blitz ofspeed, a balanced car, supreme car handling skills and raw guts.

It’s a 300 metres long climbing, swift, winding left-right, taken at topspeed. As the drivers come out of the La Source hairpin, they frantically moveup the gears and build up speed. Mid-way in the approach to Eau Rouge, they arescreaming down at a top speed of 320 kms an hour -- fathom that, five times thespeed at which you would drive in city roads.

The track curves just so slightlyto the left, then to the right, before leading off into the Kemmel Straight --with the drivers still on the throttle. The bends in the road at Eau Rouge areso marginal that a driver needs to tweak the wheel just so slightly to keep thecar on track. What adds to the drama is that the exit to Eau Rouge is blind. Atthe exit, the track peaks, so that the driver doesn’t see the exit till he’sactually there.

It's racing on the edge. At top speed, the margin of error is so small thatif a driver places the car half-a-feet wrong or tweaks the wheel a millisecondlate or has a car whose handling isn't close to perfect, it will send the carand driver hurtling through the gravel trap and into the tyre wall.

Faced withsuch dire consequences for man and machine, drivers prefer to choose safety overbravado and tend to take their foot of the pedal just a tad at Eau Rouge, so asto get that extra grip and balance, before screaming off again down thestraight. Every year, a handful of drivers, notably Villeneuve, try to take onEau Rouge, often with disastrous results.

Not this year, though. The unwilling patrons at the helm mean F1 drivers won’tscorch the Spa track. And the biggest loser in this deal is the sport itself.

Even as a 37-year-old Steve Waugh was carving out the century of his lifetimeat the Sydney Cricket Ground, another would-be sports geriatric was swattingtennis balls and dismissing opponents half her age in another part of Australia.Martina Navratilova is 46 years and 3 months old, but she has a sportingappetite and competitive instincts that would put Generation Next to shame.

Last week, Navratilova, partnering 17-year-old Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia,won title number 167 at the Gold Coast Women’s Hardcourt Championship. In theprocess, she became the oldest player to win an event on the women’s tennisyour, bettering her own -- who else -- record. And come January 13, she willonce again team up with Leander Paes at the Australian Open.

As an athlete and person, Navratilova is interested and perceptive to othercountries and cultures. Waugh’s epochal innings, which struck such anemotional chord with Australians, didn’t escape her attention. And she hadmore than a comment or two to offer on the matter, taking a swipe atconventional sporting speak that starts to holler retirement once athletes startblowing 30-something candles on their birthday cakes.

She said: "People paytoo much attention to age. Pay attention to results… If they didn't know he(Waugh) was 37, he would still be on the team... People are living longer, so 30for an athlete is not necessarily the end of the road. Forty is closer to it, sohe's (Waugh) still got a couple of great years left, that's for sure."

Navratilova is a shining example of meaningful longevity in the world ofsports, of how desire and drive can ably compensate for loss in physicalprowess. It helps that she is a naturally gifted athlete who loves a range ofsports.

Even today, she plays a mean brand of tennis on court, one that doesn’task for favours and doesn’t take any prisoners. That’s not all. She skis,snowboards, plays basketball (that too full-court games, one-on-one ortwo-on-two!). There’s more. In winters, Navratilova plays competitive icehockey for women in the US, for a team called the Aspen Mother Puckers (yes,Mother Puckers)!