Off the ball: Waugh's lost but fighting the inevitable

The Aussie test cricket captain should grab the chance to retire with some dignity, writes PETER JESSUP.

When Ben Franklin wrote that nothing in life was sure bar death and taxes he might well have added a comma, followed by "and the sacking of captains and coaches".

The latest case in point being Steve Waugh.

It's the great sadness of top-level sport that no one can do it forever, and that most of those who make the top find it unbelievable when someone tells them their time is over.

Selectors are there to do a job and it would be wrong for them to allow sentimentality, past performance, friendship or anything else other than form to influence a toss-up between the best up-and-comer and the guy whose time has come.

Shown the door and asked to open it, Waugh has clearly told the Australian Cricket Board's selectors he'll be stuffed if he's going anywhere.

They dropped him, just as they did the last Australian one-day captain who failed to secure them a finals spot in their own three-way series.

Mark Taylor didn't want to step down as one-day skipper either when it was suggested he was past it after the West Indies and Pakistan beat Australia out, two years before the 1999 World Cup. The selectors acted, and Waugh went on to lead Australia to cup victory.

So, it's a bit odd to see Waugh bleating as the same thing happens to him. And there's curious interest in listening to Taylor, now a broadcast man, commenting.

Having called the media a bunch of dickheads in one of his last exchanges as one-day captain, Waugh presumably won't be applying for a job in the industry. Waugh's record is indisputable, his achievements legend, his ability huge - but waning. Clearly. For all to see.

He should have gone cleanly and, even now, should graciously concede he's had his run and that he's leaving to give someone else a chance.

Few, though, go out at the top. The comeback failures include greats like Mark Spitz, suffering the indignity of expulsion from US Olympic trials, and Muhammad Ali, age 38, beaten senseless by admirer Larry Holmes, aged 30.

Ali's "comeback" against Larry Holmes in 1981, two years after he'd "retired", was not a great day in sport. Holmes held back, looking to the ref to call it off, but had to go on and finish things in brutal fashion, with no credit to anyone.

Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest athlete of all time, is the best case in the present.

Jordan won National Basketball Association titles from 1991-93, an Olympic gold medal as an amateur at Los Angeles in'84 and as a pro at Barcelona eight years later.

Then he came back after two forgettable years in baseball and did the unbelievable, leading an almost-new Chicago Bulls team (coach Phil Jackson and fellow headline act Scottie Pippen also there for both stints) to another three titles.

Jordan scored the winning basket in the final moments of the last and deciding game against the Utah Jazz. At the time, opposition coach Jerry Sloan calls Jordan "the greatest player who has ever played".

Jordan and Jackson call it "the last dance".

It was the ultimate fairytale ending. And Jordan had earned an estimated $US180 million.

But it wasn't enough and, unable to sit courtside while the Washington Wizards, in which he'd bought a shareholding, kept losing, Jordan came back.

He was scoring well early on. But lately he's had scores in single figures, something that hasn't happened since his first years in the NBA in the early 1980s.

He's going on 40, so things aren't going to get better.

Waugh, age 36, great as he once was, should see the writing on the wall. He's not going to make the one-day team again.

Does he think the five selectors are going to back down? Or that Australia doesn't have better players, or alternatives as captain?

What he should be thinking is that the selectors are being disingenuous when they claim they'd like him to go on as test captain.

But these days no one wants to walk, especially not when there's a wage like $A700,000 at stake.

The abruptness of being axed is a huge shock to those at the top, from captains of the school team upwards.

Suddenly, all plans fly out the window courtesy of the selectors and obscurity beckons. Ordinariness. Ageing. Where most of us live.

It's a shame for the Steve Waughs of sport that they can't leave satisfied with what they've achieved.

The great Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi had Waugh's type down pat in a description of one of his players: "He deserved more credit than he got but he wanted more credit than he deserved."