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The Sydney Test of January 1984 was a special event, as announcements came through during the match that both Greg Chappell and Dennis Lillee were to play their last Test for Australia. Although the match itself was nothing spectacular - Australia beat Pakistan by ten wickets - there was plenty of emotion as Chappell ended his career with a big century and Lillee ended his with a five-fer. Twenty years later, the Sydney Test of January 2004 will be no less special.

When Australia meets India in the Fourth Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground, it will be the last Test match appearance of Stephen Rodger Waugh. That most successful of Australian captains announced his forthcoming retirement at the SCG yesterday.

By choosing a graceful exit and giving six weeks notice, Waugh has added an extra theme to the Australia-India series, which becomes for him a personal farewell tour of the eastern states (his last Test at the WACA was against Zimbabwe last month - Hayden’s 380 game). And in case the series happens to be looking lop-sided after the first three Tests, Waugh has surely guaranteed a sellout at the SCG as his hometown crowd comes along to say goodbye.

By setting his own agenda for departure, Waugh has avoided the anticlimax of some of the other recent greats of the Australian game. While Chappell and Lillee went out triumphantly at the SCG in 1984, the fact that it was also Rod Marsh’s final Test was not made clear for several weeks afterwards.

Allan Border’s international retirement in 1994 was an abrupt off-season announcement, though he did hang around with Queensland long enough to take part in their first Sheffield Shield win the following year. When Mark Taylor walked off the SCG in 1999 having retained the Ashes, we all feared it was the end, but hoped that he would hang around a bit longer. However, with his batting form fast evaporating, he made the only sensible decision a few weeks later.

Ian Healy made a sudden decision to retire just before the start of the 1999-2000 Test season, as did Mark Waugh three years later. Both ended their illustrious careers in low-key circumstances, in Zimbabwe and Sharjah respectively. And both had almost certainly got the tap on the shoulder from head of selectors Trevor Hohns telling them to go before they were dropped.

Hohns may well have had the whisper in Steve Waugh’s ear as well, his dreams of playing on for another twelve months in hope of winning a Test series in India having now been abandoned. But he had already been down a similar road in early 2002, standing down from the ODI side to tour South Africa when it became clear that there was no guarantee that he was going to be chosen.

At the age of 38, the signs are there that the Steve Waugh machine is starting to wind down. In between some brilliant innings at the start of the 2003-04 season - two match-winning centuries against WA in the ING and Pura Cups, and a big ton against Tasmania - Waugh has made three ducks in six Pura Cup innings. His bowling is slow-medium these days, even though he has not lost his love of the bouncer, much to the disdain of Michael Hussey who fell victim to a Waugh waist-high short-pitched ball in a Pura Cup game that I witnessed a few weeks ago.

The captaincy, though, is still sharp. He is, statistically, Australia’s most successful Test captain ever. He’ll come close to matching Allan Border’s record for the most Test runs, though Australia’s expected dominance over India will mean that his batting opportunities in the coming series should be limited. He has provided so many great memories over the past eighteen years, that extraordinary moment of theatre with his last-ball-before-stumps century against England last season being just one.

There will be more eulogies during the coming Test series, one can be sure, for the man who quite possibly is Australia’s most loved cricketer since Bradman.

As to his successors, the next Test captain of Australia can be no one else but Ricky Ponting. He has shown outstanding leadership in the limited-over arena, and a World Cup is testimony in itself. I would have liked to have seen Waugh step down from the captaincy straight away and play out his career as a specialist batsman under Ponting’s leadership, however that’s not to be.

Looking at his successor in the Australian batting order, I see only one logical name. While Martin Love and Brad Hodge are showing highly consistent form at state and county level, both turn thirty in 2004. True generational change will be achieved by passing the role over to a young batsman, now 22, also from Sydney’s western suburbs, one of exceptional talent and maturity - already displayed to great effect in the one-day game. A cricketer already seen as, perhaps, the Australian captain following Ricky Ponting.

It would indeed be fitting for the Australian Number Five baton to be passed from Steve Waugh to Michael Clarke.

On the eve of the Rugby World Cup semi-final between Australia and New Zealand, it’s worth looking another rivalry between the two countries that wasn’t quite as intense as it should be.

Australia and New Zealand have completed their three meetings in the current, and protracted, ODI tri-series with India. Australia has swept the series-within-a-series 3-0. In the unlikely event that New Zealand can roll India in the final league match at Hyderabad on Saturday, Australia will get a fourth crack at them in the final at Eden Gardens, Kolkata on Tuesday night.

It could hardly be seen as an omen for the rugby, however, as the All Black are expected to cream the Wallabies on their way to beat (bold prediction ahead) France for the Webb Ellis Trophy.

Back at the cricket, the first of the three meetings, at Faridabad on October 29, was a horrendous mismatch. New Zealand batted first in the early morning conditions and were rolled for 97, Australia winning by nine wickets and exactly 33 and a third overs to spare. A game all over by about half an hour after lunch.

Another early morning collapse at Pune on November 3, although this time NZ were sent into bat by Ricky Ponting. From 21 for 4 and 68 for 5, New Zealand were able to recover to 258 for 9 with some fine batting from Jacob Oram (81) and Brendon McCallum (51*). They were, for a while, in a great position to win the game, thanks to Daryl Tuffey’s 4/30, but the fielding fell apart at the end. Two sitters put down off the last two balls of the game saw Australia through to a two-wicket win off 49.5 overs. An extraordinary game that one.

Stephen Fleming put the top-order jitters down to the moving ball at the absurdly early start of 8.30am. His conspiracy theory was that India played all their games as day-night encounters, and all the games not involving India were shunted off to venues without proper floodlighting. Say hello to commercial realities, Phlegm.

Another post-breakfast start at Guwahati on November 9, and Australia were put into bat by His Flemness. Thirty-four for three in the sixth over, you call that a collapse? But Australia made it to 225 for 7, a masterful 84 not out from Michael Bevan pushing things along. It was afternoon, however, when New Zealand crashed to 181 all out in 45.3 overs, to lose by 44 runs.

Australia’s ODI winning run against New Zealand is now six on the trot, beginning with that remarkable game at the MCG in January 2002 when Michael Bevan scored 102 not out to take Australia to victory after being 82 for 6. The next meeting was dismal - Australia winning by 164 runs in that forgettable ICC “Champions Trophy” in Colombo in September 2002. And then there was that extraordinary match in the World Cup Super Six round at Port Elizabeth, where Bevan and Bichel batted Australia back into the game before Brett Lee blew New Zealand away.

Australia versus New Zealand in cricket should be one of the sport’s great rivalries - they turn on great encounters in rugby league, rugby union, netball, and indeed women’s cricket. So why isn’t it?

It only really became intense in the eighties in the wake of the Underarm Incident, and afterwards when a mighty captain in Jeremy Coney led a team which included a genius named Richard Hadlee. While there have been some enthralling Test encounters - the 2001-02 three Test series was as good a 0-0 draw as one could ask for - the Australian authorities have always packed them off to the lesser venues such as Perth and Hobart. No Christmas-New Year MCG or SCG Tests for the Kiwis.

Cricket needs its own Bledisloe Cup for Australia-New Zealand rivalry. While Test cricket between the two needs a lift in profile (and sadly it looks like NZ will yet again play second fiddle to South Africa in the 2004-05 Australian season), they could do no worse than match up each winter under the roof at the Telstra Dome in Melbourne for a three-match ODI series. It would be a chance to get a new tradition rolling, and keep cricket’s profile up during the footy season.

Probably the most prestigious literary awards for sports non-fiction is the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year award. One cricket book, “Bodyline Autopsy” by David Frith, appears among the six shortlisted for the 2003 Prize, with the winner to be announced on November 24.

Frith’s book is up against no less than four books about soccer (”Broken Dreams” by Tom Bower, “Ajax: The Dutch, The War” by Simon Kuper, “Foul Play” by David Thomas, and “Bob Wilson: My Autobiography”), and one about golf (”In Search of Tiger” by Tom Callahan).

In the fourteen years since the award’s inception in 1989, just two cricket books have picked up the top prize - “A Lot of Hard Yakka” by Simon Hughes in 1997, and Derek Birley’s masterful “A Social History of English Cricket” in 1999.

Last year’s winner was Donald McRae’s book on Jesse Owens and Joe Louis, “In Black & White”, while 2001’s winner was Laura Hillebrand’s “Seabiscuit”, which has recently been made into a film. The 1992 award winner, “Fever Pitch” by Nick Hornby, was also made into a film dramatisation in 1997.

Books eligible for the 2003 William Hill award must have been published in the UK between 23 October 2002 and 22 October 2003. The winner will receive £12500 pounds sterling, plus a free £1500 bet from the sponsors. (And, no, William Hill are not taking bets on the winner, at least not on their website when I looked.)

Cricket books previously appearing on the shortlist:
1990: “Basingstoke Boy” by John Arlott and “Ranji - A Genius Rich and Strange” by Simon Wilde;
1991: “Spring, Summer, Autumn - Three Cricketers One Season” by Rob Steen;
1994: “Sporting Colours: Sport and Politics in South Africa” by Mihir Bose, “Anyone but England: Cricket and the National Malaise” by Mike Marqusee, and “Letting Rip: The Fast Bowling Threat from Lillee to Waqar” by Simon Wilde;
1996: “Wally Hammond: The Reasons Why” by David Foot and “Bradman: An Australian Hero” by Charles Williams;
1997: “W.G.: A Life of W.G.Grace” by Robert Low;
1998: “We’re Right Behind You, Captain!” by David Hopps;
2000: “Mystery Spinner” by Gideon Haigh;
2002: “Opening Up” by Mike Atherton.

(Postscript: The 2003 award was won by “Broken Dreams”, a book about financial mismanagement and corruption in British soccer. The one remotely cricket-related connection to the selection panel was the presence of Frances Edmonds, wife of Phil and noted author in her own right.)