Cup win would be another jewel in Waugh's career

It was if time was standing still as the past, present and future of New South Wales and Australian cricket were fused at the crease in the recent NSW vs Queensland Pura Cup match.

It was the final match of the season and NSW with an 80-run deficit on the first innings needed to win to make it to the final.

Always the man for the occasion, Steve Waugh played a vintage knock, reminiscent of his more famous one only two months earlier at the same venue against England.

Waugh wound back the clock as he bludgeoned the Queensland attack into submission and turned the first innings deficit into a handy lead. It was the first time he had made a century on the Sydney Cricket Ground against Queensland.

It was 18 years earlier in a game against Queensland that Waugh made his name. Waugh actually made his first-class debut in a game against Queensland at the Gabba but it was the 1984/85 Shield final where he came of age.

After Queensland scored 374 in the first innings, Waugh batting at No 8 came to the crease with NSW at a perilous six for 223 which shortly became seven-down when Imran Khan went. The 19-year-old Waugh, batting with a maturity way beyond his years, led the tail to take NSW to 318. He made 21 in the second innings as NSW went on to win the final by one wicket, the only time the Shield has been won in the last session of the season.

That game metamorphised Waugh from an unknown into a player who could lead Australia out of their doldrums. He had performed on the national stage against the national captain and it would be less then a year before he would be representing his country.

Notwithstanding brief times when he has been dropped or when he has been injured, this has been the first time in nearly a score of years that Waugh has been a regular for NSW. For him it would have been a case of 'Back to the Future' as he got another taste of what it's like to be a first-class cricketer in Australia. It's a unique situation which Waugh finds himself in. Players like Border and Boon devoted themselves to winning the Shield only after they had retired from international cricket.

Waugh finds himself in a position to win the Shield late in his career, not as a bit player but rather a key cog in the machine. Most international players try to return to first-class cricket after their Test career is over. Now because Waugh has been dropped from the one day team and has spent the better part of the season with the Blues, when he finally does decide to hang up the boots, whether or not he decides to play first-class cricket for NSW won't be an issue.

Playing Pura Cup cricket for the last two months has honed Waugh's skills and he should be the first player selected for the tour of West Indies. Based on what he saw from the vantage point of 22 yards away, Waugh wouldn't mind if Michael Clarke was selected.

Waugh had the best seat in the house whilst Clarke was putting on a batting clinic. Right from the start, he displayed shots of the highest quality and was equally merciless on all the Queensland bowlers. This was no popgun attack, rather the leading one in Australia. Granted they were weakened by the absence of Adam Dale and Joe Dawes and an injured Lee Carseldine but in Michael Kasprowicz and Ashley Noffke they possessed two of the leading wicket-takers for the year.

Michael Clarke is the type of cricketer that Steve Waugh loves and loves to have in his team as he is the full package. An aggressive batsman, a shrewd part-time bowler, a magnificent fielder with a cannon-like arm, silky hands and an intelligent cricket brain.

Clarke could slot right into the Australian side now and is the type of cricketer who has the rest of the world bemused as to how this country keeps producing players of the highest calibre.

The Pura Cup final is a five-day game and has a Test match feel to it. The intensity and passion displayed in finals past is testament to how much is at stake.

In Australian sport, there is no rivalry like the one which exists between NSW and Queensland. Cricket has done its fair share in fuelling this rivalry and will do so again as the two lock horns to decide who is the best provincial cricket team in Australia, if not the world.

The game will be contested fiercely as one. NSW will go into the game as underdogs. Queensland are playing on their beloved Gabba and gunning for their fourth straight championship whilst NSW will be looking to break their nine-year drought.

Only two sides have ever won a Shield away from home. NSW won the first final at the WACA in 1982/83 and Queensland also won at the WACA in 1996/97. Which statistic will give - that NSW has never lost a final to Queensland or that Queensland has never lost a final at home?

The Bulls have not lost a game to their southern rivals since a full strength NSW defeated Queensland by eight wickets in November 1993.

NSW have the big name players in the two Waughs, Slater, MacGill and Katich. The Blues have been fortunate in that the players have been spreading the load. In Sydney, it was Steve Waugh, Clarke, Nash, Katich and MacGill who contributed. At the WACA, it was Mail, Slater, Mark Waugh and Clark who rose to the occasion.

Queensland used to benefit greatly from the fact that their players were just on the fringe of Australian selection. Now Andrew Bichel, Andrew Symonds, Matthew Hayden, Nathan Hauritz and Jimmy Maher are all in South Africa which depletes the Queensland side.

It was the experiences of that 84/85 final which helped transform Steve Waugh into a hardened cricketer. But for a win over India in the sub-continent, he has achieved everything there is to do in the game and leading NSW to state supremacy after such a long drought will be another jewel he can add to a truly glittering career.