by Chris Ryan
Monday, October 28, 2002

Mark Waugh last made a Test hundred 14 months ago, at The Oval. Darren Lehmann is a beaut bloke and even better batsman, blessed with kangaroo-like enthusiasm. On these grounds Australia's selectors made the correct choice this morning. Team selection is about facts, not sentiment.

But maybe, just maybe, they dumped the right bloke for the wrong replacement. The reasons for dropping Waugh were twofold. First, he is no spring chicken. But nor is Lehmann, who turns 33 in February. Second, he is not churning out runs the way he used to. But neither is Lehmann, who made 45 and 7 at the weekend - getting dropped three times along the way - in his first innings for a month. Michael Clarke, meanwhile, is 21 years old and has started the season with 134 and 129 for New South Wales.

The third factor in Waugh's demise is his brother, and the growing likelihood that Steve will call it quits after the New Year's Test at Sydney. The selectors, like the wisest army commanders, will have understood that while losing one Waugh is a blow, losing two simultaneously would be disastrous. All the more reason to blood Clarke sooner rather than later.

All the more reason, too, to suspect that this morning's announcement would boil down to a question of sentimentality. Mark Waugh or Michael Clarke? Experience versus exuberance. Pedigree versus pizzazz. Venerability versus vitality.

Ultimately the selectors found a third way. They picked a man who has played only five Tests in 15 years. A man who first cracked Australia's Test XII at 19, waited eight years for his next chance, and then blew it. A man who seemed certain to go down as the best Australian cricketer in living memory never to play half-a-dozen Tests. Come to think of it, Lehmann was probably the most sentimental choice of them all.

So Lehmann can count himself blessed: he has enjoyed enough luck today to make up - almost - for 15 years of misfortune. Clarke can feel miffed, but not overly so - he bats like a young Damien Martyn without the kamikaze impetuosity that was Martyn's undoing. His time will come.

Mark Waugh, meanwhile, is entitled to, well, mixed feelings. Nobody should shed too many tears for a bloke who has played 128 Tests over 12 years. But the manner of his exit is regrettable, even more so than the departures of his mates Allan Border - who jumped before he was pushed - and Ian Healy, who was denied his farewell Gabba fairytale. Waugh tiptoes into oblivion grumbling darkly about his contempt for the media and the fact that cricket is no longer fun for him. It leaves a sour taste.

He has good reason to feel bitter. He and Shane Warne have been hounded ever since the revelation that they accepted a bookmaker's money in exchange for pitch and weather information. But while Warne has largely transcended the constant press carping through his never-ending discovery of new deliveries, Waugh has paid a price far heavier than the piddling number of rupees he received in the first place.

Barely a day goes by without the newspapers - most particularly Rupert Murdoch's The Australian - quoting his declining figures like a mantra. Four straight series without a hundred. Nine out of 12 series with an average below 35. They fail to mention that he has recorded only four single-figure scores in his last 27 journeys to the crease. Hardly the stats of a man in decay.

It seems sure to blacken the way history looks on Waugh. He appears destined - like Alick Bannerman and Ian Chappell before him - to be remembered as an excellent Test batsman who was not quite so excellent as his brother. While Steve will be recalled for his unwavering grit and tattered green cap, Mark will be remembered for tripping over his feet while trying to reverse-sweep Phil Tufnell, or yawning while one of Shoaib Akhtar's inswinging yorkers crashed though his defences.

True, he has amassed 24 fewer Tests, nine fewer hundreds and averages around eight runs per innings less than his brother. And yet Mark has produced at least as many - and probably a couple more - truly epic, matchwinning knocks when it really counted. Who can forget his 113 not out at Durban to hold off a South African victory in 1993-94? Or his 126 at Kingston, in partnership with Steve, that helped wrest back the Frank Worrell Trophy in 1994-95? Or his heroic, series-swinging 116 at Port Elizabeth in 1996-97? Or his monolithic 115 not out, also against South Africa, at Adelaide in 1997-98?

In recent months he has timed the ball as well as ever; it is simply that he has had little, apart from his own salvation, to play for. He is a batsman for a crisis, yet only twice in his last 13 Tests has he strode out in the first innings with fewer than a hundred runs on the board. Matthew Hayden's resurrection was arguably the worst thing that ever happened to Waugh.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of today's events, Englishmen everywhere will be sleeping a little easier tonight. The man who has won six out of six Ashes series will not live to fight a seventh. Had Clarke replaced Waugh, England's players would probably be feeling relieved but apprehensive. With Lehmann's selection, one suspects they just feel relieved.

That is not for one moment to wish Lehmann anything other than the best of luck. Ironically his last chance came against the English too. He played the final two Tests of the 1998-99 Ashes series, helter-skeltering 49 runs in four innings and batting with the frenzied anxiety of a starving man who has been handed a bowl of steaming rice.

If he makes the same mistake again there will be no third chance. Selectors, as he and Mark Waugh should know by now, are not a sentimental bunch.

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

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