Tuesday, November 13, 2001 Perhaps Steve Waugh's mission in life – to give Test cricket a bloody great kick – was determined right from the start. In the very first of Waugh's 140 Tests, Kapil Dev's draw-at-all-costs Indians were set 126 to win in four hours on a good MCG wicket. Even a half-positive approach would have guaranteed victory; instead they dawdlingly procrastinated to 59 in two hours and 25 overs before the skies, as if disgusted by what they had seen, opened up and ensured a draw.

It is not known what the young Waugh, only 20 at the time, made of it all. Perhaps he was so stoked to be bowling to Gavaskar and sharing a dressing room with AB that there was no room in his head for anything else. Or perhaps his cricketing instincts were already beginning to rebel. Perhaps the seeds of what would later become his mantra – always play to win, even if it means you might lose – were starting to germinate.

His first four Tests all finished in draws. So did 13 of his first 21. Yet 15 years later he was telling Gideon Haigh: "Three days and a result is better than five days of boring stuff. I saw the recent Lahore Test 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. 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."

If the quote tells you something about what makes Waugh tick, his approach to the final day of the first Test against New Zealand was even more revealing. True, Stephen Fleming set the tone by declaring behind, but that was more in hope than vision and, in itself, was unremarkable.

What happened next was utterly unpredictable, even by Waugh's standards. Bold captains of the past – an Ian Chappell, say, or a Richie Benaud – might have set New Zealand 320 to win at six an over. Even then, they would probably have done so only in the last Test of a dead rubber, or if victory was needed to square or snatch a series.

For Waugh – always play to win, even if it means you might lose – all that mattered was that his bowlers had enough time to take 10 wickets. And so he set the Kiwis an eminently gettable target on a placid pitch in the first Test of a series. This was calculated recklessness; this was tearing up the coaching manuals, the captaincy primers, the history books. And the man doing it, ironically enough, is a closer student of history than almost any contemporary cricketer.

Since becoming captain, Waugh has instigated momentous change in a game where the major revolutions – overarm bowling, six-ball overs, one-day matches – were thought to have already taken place. In effect, he has turned cricket from a game in which four results are possible to one in which there are just two likely outcomes: a win or a loss. Only three of his 29 Tests as captain have ended in draws, and on those occasions rain wiped out at least half the match.

Waugh has arguably had a greater immediate impact on the way the game is played than any playing cricketer since Captain Douglas had a plan in 1932-33. In the last two years Australia's bowlers have taken a wicket every 49.3 balls and their batsmen have scored at 3.63 runs an over. That is more than just cricket being played at a frantic tempo: it is a whole new ball game. Even more significantly, captains winning the toss have bowled first in 11 out of the 23 Tests involving Australia - a complete reversal of the accepted wisdom of two years ago.

The question that cannot yet be answered is whether these are lasting reforms or fleeting trends that will disappear as quickly as Waugh does. Waugh has in his favour an unusually powerful team and an astute captain's brain. He could easily have been made to look a fool had New Zealand scrambled 10 more runs, but Waugh wisely bowled McGrath and Warne almost until the death and was quick to push his field back when necessary - everything, in short, that Adam Gilchrist failed to do after his gallant declaration at Headingley.

The mind boggles as to what Waugh's next trick will be. Might Australia, confronted by a featherbed in Faisalabad next September, rattle up 300 by tea, declare, then bowl Pakistan out for around the same total, leaving three days to force a result? After what happened at the Gabba on Monday, anything's possible.

Chris Ryan is managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and a former Darwin correspondent of the Melbourne Age.

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