Steve Waugh

It was a daft question, admittedly, but it would have been something of a coup to get Steve Waugh to say England will retain the Ashes in Australia this winter. Still, he thought about it.

We are talking over a couple of glasses of iced water on a sweltering afternoon in downtown Sydney, the day after that most unlikely of batting giants, Jason Gillespie, reminded us in faraway Chittagong that anything is possible in cricket.

'They've a chance,' he says. I look at him as if he has defected. The Southern Cross will surely fall from the sky on his bronzed head.

Waugh, after all, is looking back on a career in which he inflicted serious pain on England through seven successive and triumphant Ashes series, not without relish. Beating England was not just a job, it was an ongoing, almost never-ending joy for Waugh and his contemporaries. To misunderstand that is to miss the point of being Australian.

Growing up in Picnic Point Road, Panania, a dry, hot western suburb of Sydney, Waugh and his twin, Mark, played out fantasy Tests against England time and again in their back yard. 'There was one problem, though, and it was simple,' he writes in his staggeringly comprehensive autobiography: 'No one wanted to be the Poms when we re-enacted the action.'

In real life, he didn't have to pretend. No cricketing nation felt the heat of his talent more severely. He played 46 of his 168 Tests against England, hitting 10 centuries and averaging 58.18. In England, he averaged 74.22. He lost one of nine Tests in which he captained Australia against England. When it was all over, he missed it madly. 'Last year during the Ashes,' he says, 'when it got really tight and exciting, I would think, "Yeah, I wouldn't mind being out there, still, in the heat of the battle." '

The battle is what he loved. Still does. A shy man, he found expression in struggle. It defined him more than he might like to admit because since his retirement he has come to realise that sport is not everything. After a mauling by India in Kolkata in 1998, he picked up a letter shoved under his hotel-room door that changed his life. It invited him to visit a rehabilitation home for children whose parents suffered from leprosy.

Ever since, Waugh has worked tirelessly to raise money for the centre in Udayan. It was never a fleeting concern and remains a lifetime commitment. There is no room in Waugh's life for gestures. His cricket informed his wider life.

And in those years between December 1985, when he played against India in Melbourne on his debut, and January 2004, when he played against them again in his farewell, Steve Waugh learnt how to fight.

He is a curiously mild-mannered warrior. At first meeting, he seems almost meek. As a succession of opponents have learnt, it is a deceptive mien. Push him even mildly in a direction he objects to and he cavils immediately. Even now, two years after retiring, he invites conflict.

While he has some sympathy for the complaints in recent days and weeks by England and Australia players that their workload is oppressive, his preoccupation is with the honour of the task, of playing for your country. When I put it to him that not everyone in Australia sympathised with his criticism of the rotation system, wherein key players are allowed to step down occasionally, he is quick to put his comments in perspective. 'No, no that's wrong. You have to read it pretty carefully. I actually started the rotation system in Australia. I was all for it because I saw Manchester United doing it, all these other great sporting teams doing it, baseball teams. I thought, well, why can't Australia do it? In one-dayers, not in Test cricket.

'One-day cricket is the more commercial aspect of the game, so I think you can rotate. I guess I was against rotation for the sake of it, for example Glenn McGrath, who I thought needed to bowl a lot; there was no need for him to rest. And I was also against Ricky Ponting, the captain, resting. If there's a reason for it - for example, Adam Gilchrist was out of form and mentally fatigued - then, fine, rotate him. But rotation for the sake of it, I was against that.'

But what about burnout? Is it not a genuine issue?

'You've got to get some balance there. You've got to realise you're playing for your country and earning good money. The authorities have got to realise that if they keep such a heavy schedule, in the end the quality of the cricket will suffer, particularly among the quick bowlers.

'The bowling stock has dropped off the past couple of years because the guys are tired. They're the ones who are going to be adversely affected, especially through physical fatigue. When the quality of the bowling drops off, you'll see these big scores and you get games that are not that great to watch. So they've got to be careful that they don't overdo it.'

Yet he came close to doing that more than once. Who could forget his innings at The Oval on his last Ashes tour when, leg strapped, he lay splayed on the turf as he dived for the run that brought up a pain-racked century? He needn't have played. But he would not be denied. It was what he felt he ought to do. Just seeing off England wasn't what it was all about; he had to be there, in person, sweating and smiling, and going up to take the Ashes.

So that's the context. The Australian who more than any other formed an implacable barrier between English ambition and misery for nearly 20 years is gone from the fray, but not from our memories.

Well, Stephen, do you think England can do it again?

'Gee, I don't know,' he says. 'It's a pretty tough one. I think Australia will have the edge purely because they're focused on it, really keen to make amends. But England have definitely got a show. The Barmy Army will bring huge support, so it's almost not like an away series. If they get their best team on the park, particularly bowling-wise - Simon Jones, Steve Harmison, Andrew Flintoff, they're the core bowlers - they've a chance.'

To put that in context, had Waugh uttered such heresy when captaining Australia on his last Ashes tour to England in 2001, he would have been advised to go on a long round-the-world cruise. Forever.

Now he has the luxury of distance, retired a little more than two years and playing a few shots as a newspaper pundit, not to mention the author of an 801-page autobiography, his twelfth book.

Like most Australians (but not all the players involved in handing back the Ashes to England last summer after 18 years), Waugh acknowledges the parity is real, not imagined. 'I think Australians have coped with it pretty well. I think that's one thing Australians can do, and that is recognise when they've been beaten by a better side and give credit for it.

'I don't think you'd find anyone in Australia who'd begrudge England getting the Ashes back. At the end of the day, the best side won. It's as simple as that. Australia were outplayed, probably out-thought a bit. I thought it was a fair result. The challenge is how you come back.'

The challenge for, say, Matthew Hayden, though, is not to give any psychological ground. Pretty much neutered until the latter part of the series, he has since rediscovered his swagger and says in the current issue of Wisden Cricketer that England rely too much on Flintoff.

Waugh sees it differently - as he has done on a number of issues recently, giving rise to rumours that he has upset some of his former team-mates, particularly when he disagreed with resting Ponting and, before he had to withdraw to look after his cancer-stricken wife, McGrath. More likely, the mature members of the team respect his candour. And Waugh certainly doesn't regard England as a one-man band.

'This is the best England team I've seen as a group. As individuals, they've had just as good players in the past but haven't gelled as a team. They have matured as a side and they realise their strength lies in their unity, not their individuals. In the past there was a mentality of "well, if I do well, I'm in the next Test match", rather than "how are we doing as a side?" It's the make-up of the players, the type of players they're picking, the leadership. They may have learnt from Australia, copied the blueprint closely. Plus the influence of Rod Marsh and Duncan Fletcher.'

But haven't Australia pulled away from England since last summer? Not altogether, says Waugh. 'Australia are winning, but not convincingly. South Africa I don't think are a great side. We beat them, which is hard to do away from home, a good effort. But Bangladesh - we've taken five days both times to get past them. So, while we're winning, I don't think our form's been outstanding. We've been solid rather than very good.

'England have got something about them, especially the way they fought back in India. That last Test was a pretty good result.'

However, before we get carried away with his admiration of England, Waugh thinks there is plenty of life left in this ageing Australia team. He is sure McGrath, Shane Warne and Gilchrist will be on duty when England arrive in November and he's not as concerned as some about the back-up.

'There are a lot of good players coming through. You saw Stuart Clark, who nobody thought could really do that well, and he got 20 wickets in three Tests. You've got young Dan Callen, a good spinner coming through; you've got Stuart MacGill, who will keep playing if Shane's not there; a lot of good batsmen too - Phil Jaques, Mike Hussey. And you've got Andy Bichel, who doesn't even get a mention; if he was playing Test cricket, he'd still do well now. We have the depth.

'Obviously, pulling a Shane Warne or a Glenn McGrath out of the hat is pretty much impossible - but you don't have to to be the best team in the world. You can have guys not quite as good and still be the best.'

And what of the remarkable Gillespie, a tailender who scored 201 not out in a Test last week and whose previous highest score was 58, also as a nightwatchman, for South Australia against Western Australia in 1996.

'It was the greatest example ever that, with concentration and commitment, you can achieve most things in life. He's always been a very good concentrator. And he has got the shots, too. He's got them in the cupboard, but he rarely pulls them out. He just loves to block. He gets off on it. It was a phenomenal performance. He had the chance, the time, he knew he could concentrate, it was just a matter of grinding them down. Once he got to 100, he realised it wasn't so hard, this batting, after all.'

If Gillespie can do it, surely other bowlers can. Maybe not score double centuries - but put more beef in the score than they have done historically. 'Yes. It's a matter of getting a chance,' Waugh says. 'A lot of time bowlers get short-changed batting in the nets. They don't get much of a practice, so when they go out to bat they bat as if it's the end of the innings already. If you give them more time in the nets, believe in them and back them and, when they get in the middle, tell them they've got a job to do, you'll more easily get a partnership going. Show a bit of faith. I tried to do that as a batsman, to give them the strike, show them respect. It's amazing what can happen.'

Waugh knows better than anyone that players have to make the most of their opportunities at the highest level. He had played 26 Tests over three-and-a-half years before he scored his first Test century, against England at Headingley in 1989. Thereafter, with only occasional hiccups, Waugh turned himself from a self-doubting wunderkind into a player of grit and substance. Look at the stats. It is as if he were two players.

His departure, though, was predictably messy. Cricket rarely gets it right when shedding its heroes. David Gower's was probably the clumsiest exit in recent times. Waugh's wasn't far behind. A captain who had led his team to the very heights was reduced in his final season to being a public football. He was good enough to go on, he says, but it was clear the selectors were not in the mood to accommodate him. They had already sacked him from the one-day team. It seemed they were forcing his hand. They said a couple of players weren't happy with his captaincy.

'I'm not stupid enough not to know that there are players who are going to be unhappy because in any business, any sport, you can't please everyone,' he says. 'Your job is not to please them; it's to earn their respect, to do the job your way. So, yeah, there would have been one or two players throughout my captaincy who wouldn't always have been happy. But I was unhappy the way it was brought up, in a process where we did our contracts and had a chat with the coach and the selectors. And it hadn't been brought up in the previous three months. The tour had finished, we'd been successful and I'd heard nothing about this. But there were no answers, no mention of the names, nothing.

'That was draining. I wasn't sad it was all over. I was probably just relieved. It was a tough decision: do I say this is the finishing point or do I let it drag on like the previous year, when every article seemed to be about me, whether I was going to play on or not, how my form was. I thought, for the benefit of the side, I'll get it out there to start with. But you look back on it and it didn't really work either way because then it became the farewell tour and everything was built up around that. I couldn't win either way. There's no easy way to do it. I think it's an issue that Warne, McGrath and Gilchrist are going to have to face, maybe just make a snap decision in the end.'

It is all in the book. Not a lot isn't. Unsurprising, given it weighs 4lb and covers just about every day of Waugh's life. Its size alone has been a talking point. But it has sold massively, 180,000 in hardback so far, by some way the best-selling autobiography by an Australian sportsman. Waugh is proud of it and produces a handwritten foolscap-size notebook to underline his writing bona fides. It took him 12 months.

'Look, my brief was to write about my career and before the career. So I just kept writing. I handed over a manuscript with 230,000 words and they kept the lot. So they were obviously happy with the quality of the writing and what was in it. When I was writing, I had no idea how big it was going to be. It was their call in the end. It might have been too big, but we've had very positive feedback from most people.'

He arrives in London today to plug it. Then he is off to Lord's to join Mike Brearley, Mike Atherton, Martin Crowe, his friend Rahul Dravid, Mike Gatting, Barry Richards, Courtney Walsh and others on the MCC's inaugural World Cricket Committee. They will discuss the health of the game from top to bottom. Waugh's will be a firm and calm voice.

There will be plenty to occupy his time when it is over. 'My life has gone in a really different direction,' he says. 'I head up my own charities. I have one here called the Steve Waugh Foundation. We look after kids with rare illnesses, diseases or afflictions that don't meet the criteria of other charities. We cater for kids who fall between the cracks, whose parents can't receive any funding and whose kids are seriously ill.

'It's a long-term commitment. I don't do things just for the sake of it. I've got big plans for it. We've got a really good committee. We've raised A$1.7m [£740,000] in the past nine months. If you've got a spare hour I'll tell you how.'

He did. Trust me. Waugh has not lost the ability to inspire. And if he were still in charge, you wouldn't put a lot on England retaining the Ashes this winter.

On the field

1965 Born 2 June Canterbury, New South Wales

1985 International debut v India at Melbourne

1989 First Test century - 177no against England at Headingley

1995 Highest Test score - 200 against West Indies in Jamaica

1997 Century in both innings against England at Trent Bridge. Appointed one-day captain.

1999 Appointed Test captain. Leads Australia to World Cup victory in England, thrashing Pakistan in the final.

2001 Australia complete record run of 16 consecutive Test victories

2003 Scores thirtieth Test century, breaking Sir Don Bradman's Australia record

2004 Retires from Test cricket after draw with India in Sydney

· Out of my Comfort Zone (Michael Joseph/Penguin, £25 pp801) by Steve Waugh is published this week