Steve Waugh Quotes

The minute you hesitate you are in trouble.

Would that cricketers had better lines, or at least that their most famous were not also their tritest or most banal. 'This thing can be done,' said Fred Spofforth in 1882. 'We'll get 'em in singles,' George Hirst did not say twenty years later. 'You guys are history,' growled Devon Malcolm in 1994. 'You've just dropped the World Cup,' Steve Waugh may have crowed in 1999. At least two of these could have been put into the mouth of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So while talent is always acknowledged as a quality essential to winners, words like grit, perseverance and determination are used just as often. Indeed in the foreword to Steve Waugh’s autobiography Out of My Comfort Zone, Rahul Dravid wrote, ‘Waugh gave grit a good name!’ Apart from the fact that it’s a great line, it also provides valuable insight. Flair has always been considered glamorous, but grit has never been fashionable, and certainly not in India.

Two cricketers who were excellent at this were the Australian captain, Steve Waugh, and the champion Indian leg spinner, Anil Kumble. Neither of them was possessed of the kind of glittering talent that a Brian Lara or a Shane Warne had, but Waugh and Kumble constantly raised the bar on their performance themselves. Waugh in fact called his book Out of My Comfort Zone and Kumble memorably said, ‘All his life Sachin Tendulkar had to live up to people’s expectations, I had to change them!’ Both set themselves very high personal performance goals and had no time for mediocrity, whether in their own cricket or anyone else’s. They proved that a combination of work ethic and challenging goals could lead you to achieve anything.

Steve Waugh in his excellent book on the World Cup campaign of 1999, No Regrets-A Captain’s Diary, writes that he told his team that it would be a ‘no regrets tour’; that irrespective of the result, his team would leave England with their heads held high. ‘Once in England, I introduced a new title—The No Regrets Tour—which reflected what I wanted from myself and all involved. Nothing left to luck, no “what ifs” or “if onlys”, simply a concerted, full-on team effort that would maximise our chances of victory.’ Not a single player, he said, would end the campaign believing they could have done more. The idea was that every player would deliver a 100 per cent every time he took the field or attended a training session or even, interestingly, a team meeting. So you didn’t land up for a team meeting merely to listen and think about dinner while someone else was talking. If the 100 per cent therefore was good enough to win the World Cup that was excellent but if it wasn’t good enough then so be it. The team would be proud of having done the best it could. It comes back to the truth that there is no shame in losing if you have done the best you can.

I admire Rahul Dravid for separate reasons. He is more soldier than artist, he bats unhurriedly but with the stubbornness of a priest whose faith is being challenged. He is a self-confessed cricketer of certain limitations, but his overcoming of them, his compensations for them, these victorious battles he has with himself, are astonishing. The signature of his greatness is commitment and a parallel is to be found an ocean away in Australia. Steve Waugh was as clever, he knew how to summon the best in himself. These men were creatures of routine. So am I. ‘Soldiering on’ is our phrase.