The feud between former Australia skipper Steve Waugh and spin great Shane Warne is both sad and controversial. The dispute, as is infamous, started on Waugh's first Test tour as Aussie captain to the Caribbean in 1999, where he dropped Warne ahead of the fourth and final Test against the West Indies in Antigua.
While Warne's views on the matter and his contempt for Waugh's ways as skipper at the time can't be more popular, Waugh finally narrated his side of the story speaking on Sky Sports Cricket Youtube channel to former England captain, Michael Atherton, revealing the reason why he looked past the mighty leg-spinner.
"It was my first tour as captain to West Indies. As a captain, you are expected to make difficult decisions. That’s why you are given the job. You are not there to please everyone. I always wanted to be loyal to be my players to a certain point, but at the end of the day, you gotta be loyal to the team and their performance," Waugh said.
"I, sort of, approached it with Shane before the Test match. Before the match, we had a function, so we had a live chat and I mentioned a few things. It wasn’t a complete shot and the next day I went to a team meeting. It was Geoff Marsh, Shane Warne and me."
"Back in those days, when you are on tour, the two players and the coach picked the team, the selectors didn’t have anything to do with it. I found it strange, because you had selectors picking team for series at home, but on away tours it was up to the captain to basically make the decision."
"Warnie had just come back from a shoulder surgery. I think he was put back into the team too quickly. We had both Stuart Macgill and him in the previous Test, turning the ball the same way. Lara, and all the left-handers were hitting with the spin, and I just thought it was the right decision," he added.
“I didn’t consult too many players. I think, when you are consult too many people, as a captain, you get confused. At the end of the day, you are there to make the decision, it was a tough one, of course," said the man under whom Warne played a lot of Test matches after that rare snub.
Waugh said he was trying to protect Warne, if he could've looked at it that way, on form and hence, went with spinners Colin Miller and Stuart Macgill for the Test match that Australia eventually won by 176 runs and levelled the series 2-2.
"You’ve got to trust your gut instinct sometimes," he said. "Other people are always going to have their opinions. It was never going to be a popular decision, and had we lost the Test, my head would have been on the chopping blocks, but thankfully we won the Test and end up drawing the series."
"Looking back, I think it was the right decision, but it was also the making of me as a captain because I can make that big decision that was not going to be easy but I knew it was beneficial for the team at the time."
In a lot of ways, I was trying to protect Shane, because he wasn’t bowling well at the time. Obviously, he didn’t see (it) that way, but if we had gone on to lose on the next Test, it wouldn’t have been good for anyone," Waugh concluded.
