Waugh wants to break hoodoo

Published May 13, 2003

NEW DELHI, May 12: Even on the verge of a historic clean sweep in the West Indies by his all-conquering side, Australian captain Steve Waugh has not lost sight of his dream — to win a Test cricket series in India.

“It’s a long way away but...we haven’t won there for a long time. Those tours loom as significant ones for Australian cricket,” said Waugh, whose side will tour India next year with hope of breaking a 35-year hoodoo on Indian soil.

Australia has not won a Test series in India since 1969. They visited India last in 2001 on the back of a world record sequence of 15 consecutive Test victories and even won the first match at Mumbai, only to be stopped by an extraordinary performance from Vangipurappu Laxman in the second Test at Kolkata. The Australians went on to lose that three match series 2-1.

“I just try and learn from what happened and try and do the best we can now”, Waugh was quoted as saying.

However, Waugh, 38, who has since been dropped from the Australian one-day squad, insisted he was not driven to atone for past events. “I never look back and think, ‘We should’ve won that series’ or ‘I’ve got to make up for it now’.”

But what he was sure of was that he was going to continue in the team for some more time. “I’m not going to go through the retirement stuff again. I had enough of that for 12 or 18 months,” Waugh said.

Having scored six hundreds in all forms of cricket this year, Waugh has the form to continue and he insisted there also were reasons to support a case for his continuing.—PPI