Legends Month: The best of Steve Waugh

Test batsmen can ask for no better legacy than being remembered as a man for a crisis; the player who stood up and rescued the team when the contest was hanging in the balance.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Stephen Rodger Waugh.

Very much in his pomp throughout the mid-1990s, Waugh regularly rivalled Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara for the 'world's best batsman' tag in that era and was the man every Aussie wanted beside them in the trenches.

At Old Trafford, Manchester, in July 1997, he showed exactly why.

Australia's Ashes campaign had been floundering badly. Defeat in the opening Test followed by a washed-out second match meant the tourists were staring down the barrel of what was at that stage the unthinkable: an Ashes series loss.

Since 1989 (tellingly also a breakthrough series for Waugh), Ashes cricket had been one-way traffic. Mark Taylor, Mark Waugh, Shane Warne, Michael Slater and Glenn McGrath had all jumped on board a Baggy Green machine, against which a cavalcade of forgettable England teams stood very little chance.

So with a one-nil scoreline going into the third Test, and Australia 3-42 after Mark Taylor bravely, or foolishly – that was yet to be determined – opted to bat on a pitch that was doing plenty, England had genuine cause for optimism.

Waugh, though, always relished his role of England tormentor, and fortune was with him from the outset when he survived a huge lbw shout from Andrew Caddick.

Thereafter, inexplicably, came a barrage of short-pitched bowling. The questionable tactic was designed to unsettle and ultimately remove the New South Welshman. Yet the reality was far different.

Waugh, as was his way, dug in for the long haul, savouring the aggressive intent and capitalising on whatever loose balls came his way.

Then England captain Mike Atherton revealed later that his side believed Waugh only performed once engaged in a war of words with his opposition.

"We felt he revelled in a hostile atmosphere and sledging merely fuelled his adrenalin," Atherton later wrote in his autobiography, Opening Up.

"He arrived at the crease and soon realised this. 'Okay, you're not talking to me, are you? Well I'll talk to myself then'.

"And he did, for 240 minutes in the first innings, and 382 minutes in the second."

Waugh's partners came and went – Matthew Elliott, Michael Bevan, Ian Healy and Shane Warne all fell during Waugh's day one vigil – until he found an unlikely ally in seamer Paul Reiffel, who was 26 not out at stumps.

By that point, Waugh was unbeaten on 102, having compiled what he would go on to describe as his finest Test innings.

"The sense of satisfaction was intense," he later wrote in his autobiography, Out of My Comfort Zone, "because I'd beaten the pre-game blues, crafted on a difficult wicket an innings of quality that altered the course of the match, and executed it in front of my family."

As Atherton alluded to, Waugh wasn't done there.

Australia led by 112 when he came to the crease a second time, at which point he took it upon himself to remove the hosts from the contest entirely.

Another century, another match-winning knock, and another chapter to the Waugh legend; it was the first time in more than 50 years that twin centuries had been scored in an Ashes Test.

Shane Warne's nine wickets for the match sealed the deal for the Australians, who levelled the series at one-all.

The shift in momentum was dramatic; Taylor's men won the next two Tests, and the little urn was theirs for a record fifth-straight time.