Best XI of the most selfish cricketers

5. Steve Waugh

Steven Waugh was an enigma. He was a complete 3D package. He was gutsy. He was tough as nails. He was a tactically astute leader, but he was also someone who was often accused of being selfish for a variety of reasons. One of the prime accusations that often used to be hurled at Waugh was his penchant to beef up his batting average and of failing to protect the tailenders thus increasing his large number of not-outs.

Australian teams have had this culture where the young upcoming players would bat at No.5 or 6 and the senior players would bat at N0.3 until the latter was prepared to be moved up the order in order to allow the next generation of batsmen to occupy the spot in the lower-middle-order, something Waugh was often accused of refusing to follow.

Waugh was also infamous for throwing his batting partners under the bus. The former Aussie captain was involved in a whopping 77 run-outs in his 288 innings where he got his partner out 50 times in ODIs- even beating the likes of Inzamam-ul-Haq and Wasim Akram.

Ian Chappell was pretty scathing in his remarks during one of his commentary stints where he had labeled Waugh as a ‘selfish’ cricketer- “I think he’s been a selfish cricketer. I’ve always felt that the things you do as a player leading up to getting the captaincy do have an effect [on] how players perceive you. I’ve had the feeling that a selfish player when he becomes captain . . . gets a little less out of his players than someone who is not selfish.”