Elegant assassin

It is easy to forget, amid all the growling, the pouting, the misplaced aggression, and the bogus philosophy of sports-speak, that cricket is only a game. There are runs, wickets and catches, victories and defeats, but nobody actually dies. This is not real life, though, at its best, cricket does offer a glimpse of life, of the richness and depth of it.

That is not to say it lacks meaning. Players wouldn't play cricket, nor spectators watch it, if there was no purpose, if it was merely, as a previous Archbishop of Canterbury once called it, "organised loafing". However unseemly some of the behaviour the game has witnessed this year - and it is hard to conceive of anything more unpleasant than the atmosphere during the series between Sri Lanka and England in March - there has to be an edge to cricket, otherwise it becomes a pastime and not a sport.

Thank goodness, then, for the pleasure-givers, for those batsmen and bowlers who leave an impression of skill and elegance, of accomplishing difficult things with apparent ease. It isn't easy, of course. Players like David Gower, who seem to hold the world on a string, have to be equipped with courage to play that way.

If one were looking for a modern successor to Gower it could well be Mark Waugh. Like the English left-hander Waugh has often got out to soft-looking strokes when he looks set for a hundred, and, because his batting is a thing of beauty, there is a sense of betrayal when he does get out. It's as though he has let people down.

Waugh's century at Lord's last summer made a perfect picture, and the ground, which was at its midsummer finest, provided an appropriate frame. He began slowly, in preparation for the big innings he had in mind, advanced smoothly to his hundred from 165 balls, and when he was dismissed, it was to a direct-hit run-out from mid-on as he sought a sharp single.

While he was at the crease, finding the boundary in that fluent, almost lazy style, particularly through midwicket, a full house watched with gratitude. He had never before made a century at the home of cricket, and this was his last match there as a Test batsman. When he got there, with a single to fine leg off the inside edge, he acknowledged the whole ground, not just the Australian dressing-room, with a generous wave of his bat.

Yes, there are probably `better' players than Waugh, though not many. He could, and there are Australians who say he should, have a higher average than 42 to show for all that talent. Yet he has been a superb entertainer, a stylist of rare gift, and also, lest it be forgotten, the holder of more catches in Test cricket than any other fielder. Waugh's hundred at Lord's was a peach. It was my highlight of a cricket year that was, far too often, far too sour.

Waugh's hundred at Lord's was a peach. It was my highlight of a cricket year that was, far too often, far too sour.