90's XI part 4: I hate him, but...

My formative years were characterised by two things: understanding I was lucky as a West Indies fan to be able to watch Lara, Ambrose and Walsh at or near their primes. As an England fan, however, my over riding memory is watching the Australian teams eviscerate us over and over again and when I think of those teams there's one face that stares back at me, a face that I wanted to hate for it's smug confidence, a face that came in down the order on the rare occasions we could induce a top order collapse and smash us into oblivion. Steve Waugh. I want to hate him...but I respect him too much. Against England, there were eleven times in the 90's he came to the crease and did not get out; 13 time he scored 50 or more. The man just did not give his wicket away and made batting with the tail an art form; I mean he averaged 50 batting with the likes of Warne, McGrath and Kasprowicz, you have to give the man credit (even if you'd prefer to punch him). In all the Ashes euphoria, people have been quick to lionise Jonathan Trott. The truth is he's just doing what Waugh did less than a decade ago. Anyway, even though I respect him and he would definitely captain this team, he caused too much damage to me growing up so I'll leave you with the highlights and sign off.

World Cup 1999

122* 1998