Gibbs' horror opens door to great escape (14 June 1999)

14 June 1999

Gibbs' horror opens door to great escape

Mark Nicholas

Advance Australia Fair, and advance they do to another heavyweight bout against this same opponent in Thursday's semi-final at Edgbaston. For Steve McQueen, read Steve Waugh the incontestable star of the Great Escape. We're all still shaking.

For numerous periods of a really fabulous match at Headingley yesterday we lamented, repeat lamented, the loss of Australia from the World Cup. It seemed so silly to have a very good team win two games out of three and go home while an average, if we're honest, team, Zimbabwe, failed to win any and stay on.

Laments, though, are for the non-believers, for men who fear the worst. The worst stared Waugh in the face when he marched to the crease, ten-to-two feet in a near skip of excitement, with Australia off balance at 48 for three. The score reflected the day, which at no stage had appeared to be running in Australia's favour. Lovely, he will have thought, just my bag. For if ever a cricketer relished the throw-up zone it is Steven Waugh.

Well, he relished it all right, with such staggering conviction and to such effect that he may have even eclipsed any other of his own remarkable achievements. Waugh has now played 266 limited-over internationals and though this was only his second hundred in them all, it is the one the whole of Australia will not forget.

The signature of the innings was the way he moved from 91 to 97 in a stroke of such murderous intent that if you saw it you could never forget it. Steve Elworthy's innocent ball of reasonable length and perfect off-stump line was pull-slog-sweeped high over midwicket by a bloke who finished flat on his back because of the effort. Stand up you tart, he probably said to himself, and get on with the job.

The design of the innings had been altogether different. Quite literally, he played himself in, less aggressively even than he might in a Test match where he is so keen to immediately impose himself upon the bowler. Content with singles and establishing a feel for the mainly good pitch, he allowed Ricky Ponting the initiative and then, when the rate hit exactly seven an over at the halfway stage of the chase, he hit the accelerator pedal.

Arguably, Hansie Cronje made a mistake by bowling himself and Nicky Boje, the joint fifth bowlers and the weakest link in South Africa's attack, at the same time. Like all the great players, Waugh saw this and knew it was his moment. Australia scored 48 from the next pivotal four overs and soon after, perhaps because of them, came the instant which changed the game for good. The last ball of the 31st over turned Herschelle Gibbs from hero to villain in a flash when he seemingly caught the Australian captain off a mis-timed flick to midwicket before making to throw the ball high in celebration, fumbling his grasp and watching in horror as it fell to the floor. Gibbs's memory from the match should have been his impressive hundred. Instead, it will forever be of this ghastly mistake.

Now the strongest men in the game dug deeper still into the reserves which carry the cricketing circus around the world. The Australia balcony began to crunch on their gum, Waugh tightened his lips; to a man, the South Africans narrowed their eyes. We should have known then that the gods of the game had made their choice, but if anything the tension increased through Ponting's wasteful end, Bevan's frantic style, Waugh's endless stretching of his aching hamstring and Tom Moody's cool hand alongside the boss.

For the record, and to illustrate Waugh's omnipotence, he scored 113 of the 199 that he put on with Ponting and Michael Bevan. From the time that he arrived at the wicket, the whole support cast scored just 90. This was not an innings for the faint-hearted. It was an innings that few cricketers could possibly have played. It may well now lead to Waugh's beloved country winning the World Cup.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph