A Test career which began with a glorious debut century against England ended in disappointing fashion, but Mark Waugh has achieved enough in his 12 years at the top to be remembered as one of Australia's finestbatsmen. He finished as the third-highest run-getter in Tests for Australia (Click here for full list),

but more than the sheer volume of runs he scored, it was the grace and apparent ease with which he got them that set him apart.

Despite his excellent record, there was always the nagging feeling that Mark Waugh didn't quite do justice to his potential. He averaged only 33.23 against India and 24.64 against Sri Lanka – two of the weaker attacks in Test cricket – while averaging more than 40 against all other teams.

A closer look at Mark Waugh's record reveals some startling similarities to Gundappa Viswanath's, another stylist with whom the numbers never told the entire story. Both averaged in the early 40s (Mark Waugh 41.81, Viswanath 41.93) when experts reckoned the figure should have been closer to 50. Neither was very good at converting fifties to centuries – they figure in the top six batsmen with the worst conversion records (among batsmen who have scored at least 10 hundreds). (Click here for full figures)

But every time they did pass three figures - as they both did on debut - their team was almost assured of not losing: India never lost when Viswanath scored his 14 hundreds, while only one of Mark Waugh's 20 was in a losing cause.

Plenty has been written about the legendary abilities of his brother Steve when the chips are down, but Mark didn't exactly shy away from a contest either. Though only four of his centuries came in Australia's second innings, two of those were special knocks played in back-to-the-wall situations against South Africa. At Port Elizabeth in 1996-97, he made 116 of the finest as Australia achieved a fourth-innings target of 271 in a low-scoring match (Brian McMillan's 55 was the only other half-century in the Test). Then, the following year, he scored an unbeaten 115 as Australia staved off defeat at Adelaide.

There was much more to Mark Waugh than elegant batsmanship though. He gobbled up a record 181 catches – most of them with effortless ease in the slips – at a rate of 1.4 catches per match: the seventh-best among fielders who've taken at least 50 catches (Click here for full figures).

Darren Lehmann has a hard act to follow.

S Rajesh is sub editor of Wisden.com in India.

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