Would love to captain the current England ODI side: Steve Waugh

One of the game’s greatest leaders, Steve Waugh inspired a new crop of Australian cricketers who would go on to become legends of the game. The 1999 World Cup winning captain redefined leadership and set up an incredible team for Ricky Ponting to take over. The rest, as they say, is history.

With the World Cup around the corner, the teams are trying to settle down with a perfect team and England, the hosts, are right up there amongst the favorites. Even the Aussie legend Waugh believes this is the team to beat and he also said that things are very well in their favor going into the World Cup.

”I think that’s great if you’ve got confidence and belief, and that’s what they’ve got right now. The only thing, I guess, against England right now is that opposition will be studying the way they’re playing. They’ll be analyzing every moment so they’ll have much better game plans against England going forward. That will be their challenge, how to stay that one step in front,” Waugh said in an interview with Cricket Australia.

“Everything’s in their favor. You always say you want to peak and get momentum into a tournament, but there’s nothing wrong with having momentum in the first game either,” he added.

England play a great brand of cricket

Interestingly, Waugh also gave a priceless compliment to the English ODI side. The 53-year-old reckons he envies Eoin Morgan‘s position right now and would love to lead this side. He also predicted that the management will not tinker a lot with the make-up of the squad for the big tournament.

“If I was in their shoes if you asked me which [team] I’d like to be captaining right now, I’d like to be captaining the England one-day side. Because they’re playing a great brand of cricket, they’re a very together side, I can’t see the make-up of the team changing much and they’re playing at home.

”Even if it’s not your best side, there are still seven or eight players there who are going to be in your best team and they’ve lost a lot of cricket. That’s going to take a while to turn around. So going into next year’s World Cup, our preparation is going to be disjointed. We are definitely not going to be one of the favorites going there,” The former Aussie captain quoted.

Talkin about Australia’s chances of making it big in the World Cup, he said, “It’s not to say we still can’t win it, but we have to find form and we have to find a combination that clicks in what’s probably going to be a short space of time.”

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