Sometimes, Steve Waugh feels, people get carried away with the importance of his office. A little over a year ago, for instance, various newspapers sought the view of Australia"s 40th Test Captain on whether his country should become a republic. Crikey. As it happens, Waugh voted in favour of an Australian head of state, though not from any heartfelt predisposition, and not expecting his view to be regarded as influential. I"m just an average bloke, he says with a wry smile. Then all of a sudden I"m in the papers giving my views. Who cares? I wouldn"t care.

We"re talking in the foyer of a Brisbane hotel a couple of days after Australia"s victory over West Indies in the First Test: their 11th in succession. These are the good times, when the uncommon bond that his players have formed holds fast. All the same, he suggests, it can still be a funny sort of role. I used to look at Allan Border and Mark Taylor and think: 'Good job, being captain. You might get a bit of stick when you lose, but there"s a lot of credit when you win." But it"s a real full-time job. You"ve got to have an opinion on everything.

I"m also seeking Waugh"s views today, though purely on the canvas of cricket. And it"s surprising, really, at a time when the game is the focus of so much unwanted publicity and waist-deep in the views of others less qualified, that these have not been solicited in more depth.

After all, in cricket terms Steve Waugh is the guvnor: 130 Tests and 299 one-day international caps behind him, leader of the most successful and admired XI of his generation. Yet most of the time, his views are shrunk to soundbites and quick grabs. Perhaps observers have balked at seeking his detailed views about the state of modern cricket because of that dead-pan demeanour, that personality so obviously self-contained. Perhaps they imagine his opinions to be conventional or predictable. If so, they couldn"t be more wrong. Drawing on 15 years as a Test cricketer, his thoughts are both trenchant and evovled, quietly but firmly held.

A stray observation in the post-Test press conference a couple of days earlier seems a good place to start. Waugh ventured the opinion that international batting standards seem to have slipped. What then, with the benefit of his historical perspective, does he think about so many Test matches these days failing to go the distance? The bowling round the place is pretty good, he says. Most teams have got one or two good strike bowlers.

 But the batting, I think, isn"t quite as good as it was. People aren"t prepared to bat long periods, or that"s what it seems like. Indian players still get big hundreds, but that"s generally on their own soil where the pitches are flat and the outfields are quick. I think the batsman are there, though, and it"s good that teams are playing to win, which has been a big improvement in Test cricket over the last ten years.

Even if that means three-day Tests? Three days and a result is better than five days of boring stuff. What about a good old-fashioned draw? There"s something to be said for good drawn Test match, but I saw the recent Lahore one between England and Pakistan and I was quite amazed at the commentary saying how well England were going and what a great Test it was the most boring Test match I"ve ever seen. They didn"t give themselves a chance to win, which I can"t understand. I"d much rather be playing the way we are.

What about the paradox that countries nowadays tour each other so often - which should make foreign conditions less intimidating - yet home advantage is still appreciable? You"re always more comfortable in your own surroundings, Waugh says. You know the conditions, you"ve got family and friends around you. Sometimes people have doubts about what"s going to confront them as well, with different countries and cultures.

 That"s something we"ve tried to change over the last three to five years. The way we tour now, we try to go out and see people, have a look at the place, take in some of its culture. Teams get into trouble overseas when all they do is sit around in their hotel rooms. You"ve got to enjoy touring or it"s going to become a chore. I think that"s happening to the West Indies side at the moment. You rarely see them outside the hotel. I think they should go out and check the place out a bit more, get involved and get their minds off cricket. I really think that"s been the secret of my success away from Australia, that I"ve learned to enjoy the places I"ve been, which means you"re not so focused on how homesick you are or what your form is like.

Eyes wide shut: Waugh leads the line as his side prepares to meet history

 It"s absolutely ridiculous the number of people the ICC have got working for them. They need ten times that amount

Had I a daily deadline to meet, the interview could almost finish now. That"s two headlines already:  Lahore Test 'most boring I"ve seen"- Waugh  Waugh"s advice to Windies: Give room service a miss. Yet this would be misleading. Waugh is not a professional controversialist; merely a thoughtful cricketer who doesn"t believe in doublespeak or fake sentimentality. We talk about how the brevity of modern tours may hinder players from acclimatising to unfamiliar conditions, and I ask if he"s disappointed that the 2001 Ashes tour has been so truncated. His reputation might be as a traditionalist, but Waugh pronounces himself wholly in favour: I think the Ashes tour was too long anyway. On the last couple of tours, the county games were a waste of time. You were plying teams half-full of 2nd XI players, you went through your paces and won quite easily, and that to me doesn"t make a good tour. You want quality games. I hope that this time, with fewer games, counties will understand the importance of putting their best teams in the field.

 Waugh brings the same approach to his meditations on match-fixing. The old ways have not worked; a more centralised and genuinely global strategy is required, with strengthening of the ICC paramount. It"s absolutely ridiculous the number of people they"ve got working for them, trying to run a worldwide game, he says. They need ten times that amount of people. I think they"re going about things the right way now. But the problem is that, with so many issues to cover, they can only scratch the surface of one before they have to move to the next one.

That would entail, would it not, the national boards of control surrendering some of their powers to Lord"s? That"d be nice, answers Waugh. A lot of the time, it seems the ICC"s hands are tied; they can"t enforce anything, not even penalties for match-fixing. It would be nice if they were able to state that these were the penalties, and if there was some ruling body that could make a firm decision so people know where the line in the sand is.

Does that mean the penalties the United Cricket Board of South Africa imposed on its malefactors were too lenient? That"s a hard one, Waugh agrees; he retains a pang of fellow-feeling for Hansie Cronje, and would not like his exile to be permanent. Even people convicted of murder can expect to be out on parole in 15 years. I"d like to see him involved in the game in some way, even if it"s simply to warn younger players what might happen.

He can also find some sympathy for Cronje"s co-conspirators Herschelle Gibbs and Henry Williams: I felt for a guy like Gibbs. He was pretty vulnerable. Cronje was his role model and obviously pressured him into certain things. The sympathy, though, is conditional. By the same token, someone"s got be to be made an example of. You can"t put everything down to lack of experience or lack of knowledge. So no, I didn"t think their penalties were harsh enough.

As for Australia"s own records over the past few years, Waugh finds it hard to believe that the stain on his brother Mark and Shane Warne for providing pitch and weather information to a bookmaker more than six years ago has proved so ineradicable. I don"t see what they did as match-fixing. It didn"t affect the outcome of a game. What they did was wrong, and they"ve said that they were stupid plenty of times. You can"t keep being crucified for the same breach.

 Waugh"s disappointment with press coverage of the affair extends further, too, to the freedom with which journalists have spread the contagion, idly diagnosing matches as suspicious whenever events have not unfolded to type. You can"t just pick a game out of the air and say: 'There was something wrong there." That"s why people watch sport. It"s unpredictable. The underdog can win. Things happen in pressure situations. You have to expect the unexpected. I think it"s just some journos cashing in and trying to make a name for themselves.

 I look back on my career and there would be 25 or 30 dismissals where someone could"ve said: 'What"s he doing there? Must"ve been taking money." I got a full-toss on leg stumps from Dan Marsh in the Pura Cup recently and hit it straight back to him-and I"ve played 130 Tests. But that"s what happens. Nobody"s perfect.

The suggestion that increasing match fees and prizemoney would reduce the temptation of bookmakers" inducements meets similar scorn from Waugh. People in the past have offered us incentives for winning, he says. And I"ve always said: 'It doesn"t matter if it"s a million bucks or one cent. We"ll still play the same way." That"s the culture of Australian cricket, and I hope every country sees it the same way. If the players deserve more money because they"ve generated income, then sure, they should receive it. But I think it"s a poor way to look at the match-fixing problem. If it"s in your make-up or you"re vulnerable to it, it"s going to happen anyway. I don"t think that increased prizemoney or wages would solve anything.

At the same time, Waugh is sensitive to the income inequalities among Test-playing countries. At the recent meeting of international captains during the ICC knockout in Nairobi, he came up with the novel proposal that Test nations should agree a minimum wage for players. He has been sorry to see men such as Neil Johnson and Murray Goodwin renounce international cricket in favour of the first-class game in South Africa and Australia respectively.

 It"s a various circle, Waugh says. If you don"t pay the player properly, you lose the players, the standard falls, you don"t get the crowds and you don"t get the income. Someone has to take responsibility for ensuring that standards in international cricket are maintained - whether it"s the ICC or the boards . There"s enough money in the game to ensure that countries like Zimbabwe are able to pay the players reasonable wages to keep the teams strong.

This is of a piece with Waugh"s concern that authorities should support the game in its newer frontiers, especially Africa. It seems strange that you would get these countries involved and support them up to a certain level, then cut them off and let them go their own way. Kenya, for instance, have been admitted to one-day international cricket, but they"ve hardly had a game for nine months. How are they supposed to improve? You"ve got to get behind these countries and give them the resources they need. They"ve got some excellent players, Kenya; they could easily play Test cricket in five years if they get the right support. But they"ll go nowhere if they don"t. Waugh, in fact, recently tried to interest Australian district clubs in sponsoring a group of Kenyans to play down under for a summer; unfortunately, without success.

 Waugh"s words sit incongruously with the popular perception of Australia as the team that not only cares nought for the opposition, but leaves their ears bleeding after verbal bombardment. But then, Waugh finds this image difficult to comprehend. To him, the Australian brand of cricket is unrelenting but entirely fair. Nor does he accept that the new Laws needed their sanctions on verbal aggression. It"s ridiculous, he says. That"s what the umpires are there for. In 15 years, I don"t think it"s changed at all. I go back to grade cricket and the talk is three times as bad as what you get at international level. Sledging, he believes, is an overestimated factor in Test Cricket. It"s not going to affect the good players, and the players who won"t do that well you don"t need to bother about.

The constant, often gratuitous, reflections on Australia"s on-field manner gall Waugh, peeling the gilt from his team"s substantial achievements which he would like to see recognised in full. His faith and pride in the XI he leads is unswerving, both in private and in public - as reflected in the string of tour diaries he has published over the last seven years. Waugh"s eighth book, a journal covering Australia"s all-conquering 1999-2000 season, appeared in November, entitled Never Satisfied. Just as he wouldn"t want to be considered a fount of wisdom on the optimum Australian constitution, Waugh makes no great claims for his books, although he has no doubt that the effort involved in their composition has been personally enriching.

 The first five or six diaries, he says, I was writing an hour and a half every night, which is not an easy thing to do. But I really enjoyed it. I knew if I could do that, the discipline would flow into other aspects of my life. I"m proud of them, actually. I haven"t had anyone else do them for me. I mean, Geoff Armstrong [his publisher at Harper Collins] has been great - without him they wouldn"t be possible - but I"ve put in a lot of work. And while it"s really just a bit of a fun thing, you know, I think there"s some good stuff in there. Sometimes I"m a bit surprised that people don"t pick up on some of it.

Best captain ever?

Quite so. In fact, having recently re-read it, there"s been something I"ve been meaning to ask Waugh about his first diary of the 1993 Ashes tour, in which he writes of betting £25 on himself at 8-1 with an English bookmaker to top the Australian aggregates during that series. He"s quite pleased. There you go, he says, There"s stuff like that. Then he smiles warily. You know, I can"t remember doing that. But if you say so. Did I actually put money on myself? I"d better check that out. For those interested, it"s on page 19. They were innocent days, were they not?

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