Waugh's final stand

Tendulkar hailed him as an inspiration while one official pronounced him not just a great Australian sportsman but a great Australian. Somehow, it didn't seem over the top.

Waugh once told me in an interview that "the harder the game is, the more I love it - and if it isn't tough, then the secret is to make yourself believe it is."

This was an occasion where he did not have to convince himself. When his moment came midway through the afternoon, Bill Lawry's panicky query from the commentary box - "Can he save Australia? They're in trouble" - set the scene perfectly. For one last time, the man a nation would choose to bat for its life was being asked to revel in a crisis.

Australia were 170 for three with thoughts of victory seemingly disappearing on a turning pitch with a touch of uneven bounce and with Anil Kumble threatening to spin the hosts' first home series defeat for 11 years.

It was the perfect stage for Waugh, yet the sheer emotion of the moment when the most capped cricketer of all emerged to play his 260th and final innings made one fear that it could all end as quickly as Don Bradman's anti-climactic farewell in 1948 when he succumbed for that fabled secondball duck at the Oval, courtesy of Eric Hollies.

How Waugh managed to keep a level head after all the predictable fuss that had surrounded his entry is anybody's guess. First, he had had to manoeuvre his way through the camera flashes just to get to the wicket and by the time he was taking his guard, the cheering and applause had still not subsided.

He seemed momentarily fazed. First ball, he tried to drive Kumble rashly and got a bottom edge which prompted his partner and successor as captain, Ricky Ponting, to go down the pitch at the end of the over and give him a blazing-eyed, intense lecture.

It didn't work. Next over, facing the young left-arm spinner, Murali Kartik, he survived an lbw appeal when playing no shot and next ball wildly hoiked a slog sweep skywards. It smacked of nerves but with Waugh, we should have known better. Ponting's dismissal shortly before tea had seemed to have ended any prospect of an Australian win. With 35 overs still to negotiate survival seemed the only hope, yet Waugh never stops thinking miracles.

This time last year, of course, he had compiled that remarkable dashing century at the SCG against England which may well have rescued his career just when everyone seemed ready to pension him off and enabled him to retire on his own terms now.

After tea, he continued to mix this watchful defence with some glorious assaults on anything loose and reached his 50 with his 11th boundary.

With the Indians clearly getting more frustrated, Waugh felt that, with six wickets left going into the last hour, he and Katich had effectively already guided Australia to safety so they could have a thrash for glory with 152 needed off 15 overs.

When he finally perished to Kumble after a three-hour stay, though, and Adam Gilchrist fell cheaply, Australia shut up shop to be guided to their draw by Katich, unbeaten on 77.

Waugh smiled wryly; one of sport's greatest winners was never going to go out a loser.