A hard man with a soft touch

When Steve Waugh wants something, he gets it. Accordingly there seems virtually no doubt that, though he has never scored so many runs in a series before, he will coolly rustle up the 515 he needs to beat Allan Border's world runs record. That landmark should stand, however, for only two or three summers at best. And Waugh, you fancy, might be a bit annoyed about that.

So it will come as no surprise - in fact, it is bordering on inevitable - that we will at some stage see Waugh, out of sheer perverse bloody-mindedness, chugging in off his long run and pilfering those nine wickets he needs to go where no man has gone before. Ten thousand runs, one hundred wickets: the unthinkable double. That landmark should stand for two or three centuries, at worst. And Waugh, you suspect, might be tinkled pink about that.

Getting what he wants is one of Waugh's many defining qualities. In the past 48 hours a thousand adjectives have been reeled off, most of them familiar: tough, gritty, determined, ruthless, passionate, patriotic, pugnacious. And yet Waugh has never been so simple to read.

He is a contradictory, confounding creature. He can seem humble, he can seem self-centred. He is a hard man with a soft touch, who sneers at opponents but dotes on leprosy sufferers. He can seem shy and quiet and modest one day, shrewd and witty and headline-chasing the next. At the after-match press conference, one of many arenas where Waugh is master, he does not so much answer questions as set agendas.

The contradictions were rooted firmly in place until the very last. A colleague this week was bewildered by the way Waugh, during his no-frills announcement of his retirement on Wednesday, seemed utterly without sadness or anger. That's because he reveals nothing, I explained.

Immediately a wave of contradictory images swamped the mind. A vulnerable Waugh, an emotional Waugh. There he is in Colombo, spitting blood and venom after ploughing into Jason Gillespie in the outfield. There he is at Port-of-Spain, with murderous eyes and a filthy tongue, going to war with Curtly Ambrose. And there he is in the gully, smirking to himself when Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath have the batsmen pinned down by the throat, cursing and frowning on one of the rare occasions when they don't. Emotionally emotionless, in a very Australian kind of way.

On the journey to England in 2001, Waugh and his men stopped off at the Gallipoli battlefield in search of inspiration. All the players tried on the big-brimmed, old-style slouch hats which the diggers used to wear. All of them looked faintly ridiculous. All except Waugh, that is, who looked so comfortable he might have been born in one.

There is something of Ned Kelly, of Simpson and his donkey, in Waugh. Icon is an abused word in Australian society. But with Waugh it fits. His fame transcends his sport in a way that was true of precious few Australian cricketers before him: Don Bradman, Keith Miller, Richie Benaud, Dennis Lillee, Warwick Armstrong maybe. People who couldn't care less about cricket care passionately about Steve Waugh.

Which makes the way he has been treated by Australia's selectors seem shabby and mean-spirited, as well as ill-advised. Trevor Hohns, Allan Border, David Boon and Andrew Hilditch are perhaps the only four people in the country for whom the number 38 (Waugh's age) is more resonant than 104 (his Test average during the past 11 months).

John Benaud, the always thoughtful former Test selector, made a particularly intriguing observation in an interview last year. "I think there's a theory at board level," said Benaud, "that the one-day team has to be a young, vibrant outfit, and I think that's a reasonable approach. The marketing people want to get a message across that cricket's a young man's game."

Benaud emphasised back then that commerce and razzmatazz were factors only in one-day selection, never Tests. In the 18 months since the policy would appear to have been expanded. Colin Miller, at 38, was bowling more tightly and ingeniously than ever when the selectors decreed him past his use-by date. Damien Fleming was 33 when he retired. The board, rather than endeavouring to change Fleming's mind, lined up a coaching job for him at the academy instead.

That manoeuvre backfired this week when the selectors, constrained by injuries, were forced to announce a severely undermanned attack for next week's first Test in Brisbane. If Fleming was still playing today, as he should be, he would have waltzed into the XI.

You could forgive the selectors for being keen to fast-track the elevation of Ricky Ponting, whose one-day teams have played with an all-smiling, fire-breathing intensity. Ponting, just as significantly, has declared he will not tolerate personal agro or abuse - which, given the current climate, is almost as prized as not tolerating defeat. When McGrath lost his cool with Ramnaresh Sarwan this year, and pictures of a finger-jabbing grumpy old man bounced across breakfast television screens, the public made plain its displeasure with the board. And the board made plainer still its displeasure with Waugh. This, conceivably, counted against him.

But you could forgive Waugh, too, if he is feeling a bit miffed today. The selectors departed from their normal mum's-the-word modus operandi last summer when they commented publicly on his place in the team, telling him there were no guarantees. Waugh wasn't pushed but he was given a fair old shove. To depart with dignity, his only option was to depart now.

It is too sad, too sour, to dwell on these behind-the-scenes machinations. Years from now it will all be forgotten, perhaps even by Waugh himself. Best to remember him for 18 amazing years, not 12 anxious months. But remember, too, that this was one occasion he wanted something and didn't get it.