ELEVEN
MARK TAYLOR
‘Not too many people die over a game of cricket.’
Mark Taylor could not have timed his ascent to the Australian captaincy better if it had been a gentle swinging half-volley begging to be punched through the infield. Unlike his predecessor, Allan Border, who had spent his early years digging his team out of the post-Packer doldrums, Taylor inherited a side bursting with talent and not only on the up but also with their previous captain’s work ethic instilled in them.
There was no great upheaval, no revolution, just a straightforward handing down of the baton from the retiring captain to the man who had been his second-in-command for the previous two years. Border had captained Australia for 93 consecutive Tests; Taylor would now take care of the next 50 in an unprecedented era of stability for the national team. To put it into context with their old enemy, England had seven captains (if you count Gower twice and Allan Lamb as a stand-in) over the same period, while the captaincy officially changed hands no less than five times.
Some men might have been intimidated taking over the role from a national icon like Border, but Taylor had huge confidence in his own abilities as a leader and relished the opportunity. Where Border had been a reluctant captain, Taylor was very much a captain in waiting. As Steve Waugh said: ‘Mark wanted to lead the side and always had his mind on being captain. He really enjoyed it.’
Justin Langer observed: ‘He could have been Prime Minister. He was very diplomatic, intelligent and articulate.’
Taylor made his Test debut against the West Indies in January 1989, but it was in an Ashes context five months later that he properly announced himself on the international stage. He scored 136 and 60 in his first Ashes Test at Headingley and remained a thorn in the side of England all summer, racking up 839 runs at an average of 83.90 in the six Tests: the second best aggregate in Ashes history behind the great Sir Don Bradman. Australia trounced England 4–0, but Taylor wasn’t done. He returned to Australia full of confidence, amassing 1,403 first-class runs at an average of 70.15, and ended 1989 with 1,219 Test runs to become the first player to better 1,000 runs in his debut calendar year.
Quickly established at the top of the order and possessing a sharp cricket brain, Taylor became the obvious choice to succeed Border. He was appointed in 1994 after the latter’s retirement but, smooth as the transition was, the contrast in their leadership styles was stark. Where Border had been tough and uncompromising, Taylor was more laid-back, cheerful and conciliatory. Border, a man of few words, inspired his players by deeds, but Taylor wanted to engage their minds and raise their horizons. ‘I had a bit of a philosophy of how I wanted to do the job when I took over,’ Taylor said. ‘Allan Border was a better player than I was and a great leader by example but he wasn’t a great communicator. People would follow him because of the example he set and I didn’t think I could lead the side that way.
‘I always saw myself as more of a communicator who would take more time speaking to people. Not so much coming up with plans but rather getting a handle on how an individual wanted to play their own game and getting an idea from them how they thought the team should play.
‘When I became captain, I went to Bob Simpson’s house in Sydney and had a good half-hour chat about how I wanted to be as captain. I said I wanted a bit more say with the media, and I wanted to talk a bit more to the players about how I wanted to play. As coach, he was very respectful of that. And I made my methods pretty clear in the first three or four months in the job. I had a lot of meetings with individuals, and as a team, and explained that this was the way I wanted to do things.’
Taylor knew how he would go about things but his vision of where he wanted the Australian cricket team to go was embryonic. It started to take shape as he listened to his players and got a real sense of what they thought was possible. Rather than dogmatically imposing a regime like some captains have been prone to do, Taylor used his communication skills to take on board ideas from others. ‘I think what came across loud and clear from those chats was the existence of a huge amount of belief about where the team could go and how good we could be. Back then the West Indies were the yardstick and there was a collective belief that we could replace them as the best side in the world.’
Taylor looked far from a world-beating captain in Pakistan, however, when he became the first player in Test history to record a pair on his captaincy debut. An Australian side weakened by injuries lost the series 1–0, but Taylor’s confidence in himself and his team never wavered. ‘He has the thickest skin of anyone I’ve ever met,’ said Langer. ‘He got a pair in his first match as captain and he was as chatty and upbeat as ever. You’d have thought he’d got a hundred. Nothing seemed to faze him.’
Michael Atherton’s England team then arrived for the Ashes, hoping to exploit Australia’s change in captain. ‘At the start of the 1994–95 series I was the more experienced captain,’ Atherton said. ‘There were doubts about his position as the captain of Australia.’
Taylor acknowledges he started that summer under pressure. ‘The Ashes series was a big challenge because of what had gone before me. Winning comprehensively in 1989, 1990–91 and 1993 inevitably raised expectations, yet it was my first home series, having just come off a defeat in Pakistan. We started the Ashes red-hot favourites, which brings its own pressures, and you’re always under the spotlight because winning the Ashes means so much to Australians.’
Any doubts about his own form were quickly dispelled as Taylor took the England attack for 150 in a warm-up game for New South Wales in Newcastle. He might have seen his role as captain as that of a communicator but he recognised the need to lead from the front, too. ‘I set out to be aggressive in Newcastle. I wanted to set a tone for the summer and didn’t want to go out and start ducking and diving against the quicker bowlers. I wanted us to take them on as a team and needed to make a statement that we were going to challenge their bowlers.’
Australia did more than just challenge England’s bowlers – they smashed them all over the Gabba. Taylor contributed 59 to a first wicket partnership of 99 with Michael Slater before getting run out, but his junior partner raced to 176 off 244 balls and Mark Waugh weighed in with 140 at a good tempo as Australia made 426. McDermott and Warne then destroyed England, bowling them out for just 167 before Taylor controversially decided against enforcing the follow-on, the first time an Australian captain had done this since 1977–78. In Australia his decision was criticised as being conservative. ‘Everyone took it as a sign of weakness,’ said Atherton, yet Taylor himself maintains it made perfect cricketing sense.
‘I hadn’t enforced the follow-on in my first game as captain of New South Wales in the Sheffield Shield final of 1989–90 against Queensland in Sydney for very much the same reason,’ he said. ‘We made a decent score in the first innings and knocked their side over reasonably quickly, which meant there was a lot of time left. Despite having a deficit of 260, the team following on – on a good pitch like the one at the Gabba – can conceivably make 450 and you’re suddenly under pressure chasing 200 to win, which might be tough on day five. I wanted to bowl last. I knew I had Shane Warne in my side, who likes bowling last, so it wasn’t that tough a decision.’
Taylor had the courage of his convictions to go against the norm. He knew it was not the done thing, but he took all other factors – like the inevitable negative reaction of the media – out of the equation and asked himself what was Australia’s best chance of winning the game.
In many ways it was the start of a trend, as subsequently Steve Waugh rarely enforced and Warne, as captain of Hampshire, regularly batted again when he had the choice. Mike Brearley writes in The Art of Captaincy:
Captains rarely in any cricket decline to enforce the follow-on . . . I cannot remember an occasion on which I did not enforce the follow-on when in a position to do so.
Brearley is generally regarded as a master tactician and was writing just ten years before Taylor’s decision in Brisbane. For my part, I believe there are lots of things you weigh up when making a decision to enforce a follow-on. Your bowlers are your most important consideration. If they’re fatigued, you might be biting off more than they can chew by asking them to go through it all again, especially on a good pitch. Also, if you’ve a ‘gun’ spinner like Warne, you’d be inclined to have another bat so the pitch would wear more. Good captains are aware of the weather forecast, particularly in England, although they try not to be ruled by it, but if you do bat again you need to make sure you’ve got enough time to bowl the opposition out.
I can remember having a discussion with Steve Waugh on this very subject in the field against Lancashire in 2002. It was Waugh’s second game for Kent and I got the impression he was keen on having another bat just before lunch on the third day. I don’t think he had been particularly enamoured with his inexperienced captain when I had opted against taking the offer of the light late on the first day, just as he’d come in to bat in our first innings. I had a hundred to my name and was keen to keep piling on the pressure against a tiring attack, but it wasn’t easy for him starting in the gloom, so eventually I acquiesced and we headed for the pavilion. Waugh missed out the following morning and so, faced with the prospect of another hit or a day in the field, he understandably preferred the former. As it was, we stuck Lancashire back in and won by an innings.
Taylor’s decision in Brisbane turned out to be correct, although I suspect he would have won whichever route he’d gone down. His assertion that Warne enjoys bowling last proved correct, the great ‘leggie’ picking up 8 for 71, as Australia won by 184 runs. Taylor might not have been tough in the Allan Border mould, but this Test match demonstrated that he had more than enough resolve to lead his country. The easy option would have been to ask England to bat again, but here was a captain who had previously spent a lot of time talking and listening, also showing he could make the big decisions. Taylor the communicator was also a man of action.
Australia romped to a 2–0 lead in the series, with a 295-run win in Melbourne, the highlight a Warne hat-trick. Despite an England win in Adelaide, Taylor’s team ran away with the Ashes 3–1 after a 329-run victory in the final Test in Perth. The fledgling captain who had started under pressure at the beginning of the Ashes looked every inch a commander-in-chief by the end. As Atherton, his opposite number said: ‘By the end of the series, they had retained the Ashes and we were struggling. Taylor was seen as the number one captain in world cricket, although it did help that he had a bloody good side.’
Many of the captains interviewed in this book refer to the calibre of the players at their disposal, maintaining they have been fundamental to their successes and failures. Taylor is the first to acknowledge the role of Warne in his attack, although it should be pointed out that he was later to beat England without his trump card in the Australian summer of 1998–99. ‘Warnie and I have always had a great relationship,’ he said. ‘I was lucky as a captain to have him in the side right through my captaincy career, which was a real luxury. We got on really well because we’re both essentially simple guys. Shane is a very worldly figure, and a very famous one, but he’s still a very simple guy. We kept it simple; we never had a “blue” [argument] – on occasion we disagreed but that usually lasted about 24 hours and we had a beer over it and moved on. He liked to set his own field, but I think most good spinners do and I think good captains give them a bit of freedom because they know their fields.’
Taylor had played for New South Wales on the spin-friendly surfaces at the Sydney Cricket Ground and understood the nuances of good spin bowling. The pair combined tactically to strangle the life out of the opposition and Taylor himself snared many batsmen at first slip from big turning leg-breaks. ‘Shane knew exactly what fields he wanted but at least having had a good upbringing in spin bowling I had an idea what he was thinking,’ Taylor said. ‘And he appreciated that as well because we could talk a lot about field settings for different batsmen.’
By the time the sides met again in England for the Ashes of 1997, Australia were the number one side in the world by some distance. Taylor had led brilliantly in the West Indies in 1995 with an attack shorn of leading quick bowlers Damien Fleming and Craig McDermott. They assumed the mantle of unofficial Test world champions with a 2–1 victory before reaffirming this status with a 3–2 home series win against the same opposition in 1996–97.
England were a much improved side under the experienced leadership of Atherton, but there was no doubt Australia again started hot favourites for the series. Steve Waugh was the best batsman in the world, Warne the best bowler and Glenn McGrath had emerged as the best new-ball bowler in the world, giving Taylor’s team a new dimension from the one that triumphed so convincingly in 1994–95. From numbers two to eleven, the Australian tourists looked a class act, with their only potential Achilles heel being the form of the captain himself.
Taylor came into the 1997 Ashes series without having scored a Test fifty for 18 months. While he again led astutely in the home series’ triumph against the West Indies, Taylor’s best score of 43 in nine innings was hardly inspiring confidence and he was worse in South Africa, managing just 80 runs for the series at an average of 16. Most concerning of all was that his lack of form seemed to be influencing selection policy. In the second Test in Port Elizabeth, on a green pitch, Michael Bevan was selected to reinforce the batting rather than a seamer picked to exploit favourable bowling conditions. A second innings hundred from Mark Waugh saved Taylor’s blushes as Australia triumphed by two wickets.
The 1997 tour began poorly for Taylor, as England won the first two one-day internationals convincingly. Atherton even remembers spotting some dissension in the ranks of the normally united Aussies during that one-day series. ‘It looked to me like they had one or two problems because I can remember in one of the one-dayers Taylor misfielded,’ Atherton said. ‘He was a brilliant slip fielder, but he wasn’t the most mobile, and if he wasn’t at slip you wouldn’t want him on the park. On this occasion he was at extra cover and just let it through. I remember looking at Steve Waugh, who was looking at another member of the team as if to say, “What is this guy doing on the pitch?”’
Taylor recognised that his lack of any semblance of batting form was affecting the team and there were doubts over his position within it. He had left himself out of the last match of the one-day series, which England had closed out 3–0, and now he faced the real possibility of having to stand down for the forthcoming Ashes. ‘Coming in to the 1997 series, I had been in terrible form and was under pressure for my place,’ he said. ‘I sat down with Geoff Marsh, the coach, and Steve Waugh, the vice-captain – we were the selectors on that tour – and we agreed that if I didn’t get a sizeable score and the team didn’t play well, then I would have to seriously consider standing down for the next Test. My form had got to the stage where it was becoming an issue and the team was being affected.’
Taylor won the first toss of the Ashes series at Edgbaston and made the bold decision to bat first on a slightly damp pitch in humid conditions. As a fellow opener and captain I have nothing but admiration for this decision. Many captains – myself included – might well have bowled first, not least because opening the batting would have been a whole lot easier in the second innings of the game. Taylor would have had ample justification for putting England in, yet he took a road which was always going to make life tricky for himself first up against the new ball. ‘It was one of those Test match mornings where a team has to negotiate the first session,’ he said. ‘As an opening batsman it was going to be tough, but that’s your job and I always tried to take myself and my own form out of the equation when deciding what to do at the toss. You decide what’s good for the team. I was a little unsure at the toss, so I did what I always did when there was any doubt: bat.’
How Taylor must have regretted his decision as Darren Gough, Devon Malcolm and Andy Caddick reduced Australia to 54 for 8. Warne played a little cameo for 47 but a total of 118 looked thoroughly inadequate as Nasser Hussain and Graham Thorpe compiled a fourth wicket partnership of 288 in England’s reply. Atherton declared early on day three on 478 for 9, a lead of 360, and Taylor prepared for what could have been his last innings as captain of Australia. ‘There might have appeared to be a lot of pressure on me, but we were so far behind it was actually quite liberating,’ he said. ‘There were a lot of positives for us to play for as we went into the second innings, knowing we needed an absolute miracle just to make a game of it. So the pressure had switched to England, who were expected to bowl us out.’
Taylor illustrates how a batsman’s mind works to take the pressure off when in the so-called last-chance saloon. It would have been very easy for him to be consumed with nerves at the thought of it being his last game as captain of his country, but he turned the mental tables on himself to play a great career-saving innings. He shared partnerships of 133 with Matthew Elliott and 196 with Greg Blewett before being caught and bowled by Robert Croft for 129.
‘I didn’t play that well for my hundred, but it did teach me a valuable lesson. For the previous six months, during the time my form had deteriorated, I had forgotten about the bread-and-butter methods with which you score runs as an opening batsman. I had visions of playing like a better player than I actually was rather than doing the basics of working the ball off my hip and squirting the odd four down to third man – the kind of ways you score as an opening batsman. I had been looking for the big cover drive and the hook shot and all these really big shots to get myself back some form. It was not the way I had played for most of my career and it took me far too long to work that out.’
Taylor’s point about his situation feeling strangely liberating is not unique. Paul Collingwood, for example, girded his loins to score a brilliant century against South Africa at Edgbaston in 2008 just as he was being written off as an international player, while at county level I have on several occasions felt the freedom of knowing that my next innings might well be my last.
On these occasions, with the selectors’ guillotine hovering precariously above your neck, you often think clearer and stay more in the moment. There is both an acceptance of your inevitable fate, which allows you to relax, but also a desire to alter its course. I remember scoring a hundred against Glamorgan in 1999 after overhearing our coach, John Wright, tell a second team batsman that he would be playing for me in the next match as I hadn’t scored any runs for a month. My fate finally resolved, which effectively put me out of my mental misery, I scored an unbeaten hundred. Taylor’s run of poor form had been an extended one because he was leading so successfully. As a winning captain you earn a longer stay of execution, but in Taylor’s case it was ultimately delaying his date with destiny. Having sat down with Waugh and Marsh, and heard it said out loud that there was no longer a hiding place, he came good.
Taylor endured some tough times during his run drought, but he kept his positive demeanour throughout. Warne has remarked, subsequently, that he wishes he and his fellow players had supported their captain more through this time but that they were unaware it was having a big effect on him. Captaincy can be a lonely job. You find yourself taking on other people’s problems yet often there is no one to turn to with your own. On the surface, Taylor was the same positive character he had always been, but there must have been some low times where he questioned his place in the team and where his career was heading.
At these times it helps to have a healthy sense of perspective, something Taylor had in spades. ‘Something I tell captains all the time is not to take yourself too seriously,’ he said. ‘You have responsibilities but just remember it’s a game of cricket. Not too many people die over a game of cricket.’ Steve Waugh echoes these sentiments. ‘As cricketers you become cocooned and isolated and think that the world revolves around you, so it’s sometimes good to get out of that and get yourself out into the real world,’ he said.
Test cricket is more than just a game of bat and ball, especially at the level of the Ashes, but it is played best and enjoyed most when it is instinctive and fun, when the significance of the battle is stripped away. If sport becomes tedious, mundane and pressure-laden to the extent that it gnaws away at your motivation and enjoyment, then either get out of the game or shift your mindset. I’m a big believer that people choose their attitudes either consciously or subconsciously and it was Taylor’s philosophical outlook on the game that enabled him to dig himself out of the hole he was in.
Taylor’s hundred was well-received within the game. He was a popular figure, who led his team with a lot of dignity, even at his lowest personal ebb. All batsmen, whether internationals or club players, can relate to a bad trot. It is the inevitable fate of being afforded one solitary little life each time you make your way to the middle. Not knowing which end of the bat to hold is a widespread affliction as a combination of great deliveries, poor shots and iffy umpiring decisions drain the confidence levels to zero.
Not only did Taylor’s troubles strike a chord with batsmen everywhere but he was also generally regarded as a good bloke. His side played tough cricket, but they were less nasty than under Border. Taylor’s side could bare its teeth when necessary, but he made a concerted effort to decrease the amount of sledging from his team. ‘He had people around him – Warne, McGrath, Hayden, for example – who were the worst sledgers of all time,’ said Nasser Hussain. ‘But I always respected the way Taylor conducted himself and was in charge of his team. He got the balance right between releasing his players and being dignified.’
Taylor might have exorcised his batting demons at Edgbaston, but England won the Test by nine wickets and looked very much like they meant business. Lord’s was drawn after much of the game was washed out, but not before McGrath had served notice on his intentions for the summer with 8 for 38 after Taylor had elected to bowl first. England were knocked over for just 77 but saved the game comfortably in the second innings on an easing pitch.
The third Test at Old Trafford on the greenest wicket seen there for many a year was the key match of the series and it began with one of the bravest pieces of captaincy in Ashes history. Under grey skies and on a green, damp pitch Taylor elected to bat first. England’s captain couldn’t have been more pleased. ‘I would have bowled. It was a very juicy deck,’ said Atherton.
Steve Waugh remembers the atmosphere in the dressing-room. ‘Having looked at the wicket, I thought we’d got to bowl on this, but Mark came back into the changing rooms having won the toss, with us all expecting to bowl and getting our whites on, and said we’re batting. A few of us wondered if this guy had lost his marbles, but I guess there was method in his madness.’
Taylor explains his thought processes thus: ‘The toss was a tough call because the wicket was green and damp. I told the blokes I was going to bowl but changed my mind when I walked out to call. The pitch had been under the bubble cover for the previous few days and it was grey and overcast and had definitely been a bowl first job but as I walked out the sun came out. When I got out there, the pitch looked a hell of a lot better with the sun on it. I also thought back to 1993, when Gooch had stuck us in at Old Trafford, expecting the pitch to seam everywhere and it didn’t do that much. I had got a hundred and “Slats” got fifty and it played better than it looked. Also, I thought I’d like Warnie to bowl last, knowing he’d like to bowl last at Old Trafford, so I changed my mind and had a bat.’
Changing your mind is a captain’s prerogative. Too often captains are restrained by coaches or committees or selection groups, which don’t allow for sudden instinctive decisions. Yes, I accept that other voices guard against the more off-the-wall decisions, but if you’ve got a great captain who knows the game, it’s important to let him make the tough calls. Taylor’s logic is difficult to argue against here and, although there are counter positions, his instinct told him to bat first. Most captains will tell you that their first rule of thumb is to follow their gut instinct.
‘Sometimes I think teams plan too much,’ Taylor said. ‘It’s not that tough a game. Yes, you’ve got to look at your opposition and try to give batsmen what they’d least like to face and things like that, but if you do the basics well and you’ve got your team playing well, most things take care of themselves and you can captain more instinctively.’
‘He had a feeling that batting was the way to go and that he would do something different,’ said Waugh. ‘Sometimes you have to follow your gut instinct.’
Taylor’s decision at Old Trafford contrasts sharply with Nasser Hussain’s decision to bowl first in 2002–03 in Brisbane. In chapter fourteen, Hussain admits that his decision relied less on instinct than on hope that there was something in the wicket. He regrets sticking to a preconceived and essentially flawed plan rather than spontaneously changing his mind as Taylor did.
Once again, though, Taylor’s decision, while intended for the good of the team, was not great news for Taylor, the opening batsman. ‘It was tough for me as a batter. I missed out at Lord’s and, having felt I was just starting to get myself going with a fifty in the previous county game, I copped one on the gloves and was out for two in the first innings and didn’t contribute in the second.’
Australia struggled once more against the seaming ball as Dean Headley, on debut, proved hard to handle for the left-handers. When Andy Caddick had Ian Healy caught behind, the score read 160 for 7 and England were favourites to take a 2–0 lead in the series. Australia’s position was saved – not for the first time – by Steve Waugh, who played an innings that Taylor rates as one of the best he’s ever witnessed. ‘His hundred in the first innings at Old Trafford was the best innings he played in my time as captain, even better than his double-hundred at Sabina Park against the West Indies. It was absolutely crucial and changed the direction of the match. I was hoping we would get to 200 because with that we would be in the game, as the pitch was doing more than I thought it would. I would have even been happy to concede a hundred lead on first innings because we would be bowling last, which I felt would be a big advantage. As it turned out, we ended up having a first innings lead of about 70.’
Warne ripped through England, taking 6 for 48 in the first innings and, after another Steve Waugh hundred, McGrath, Gillespie and Warne got Australia back on level terms in the series with an exemplary bowling performance. Taylor won a lot of plaudits for his brave decision at the start of the game, but he credits his relationship with his colleagues as being instrumental in him carrying out his plan.
‘I think the rapport you have with your players is important because I completely changed my mind on what I was going to do at the toss. I went back into the changing rooms and most of the guys were getting their whites on, as they knew I’d won the toss. Some of them thought I was taking the mickey, but when I explained that I thought batting was the way to go they just got on with it without so much as a murmur. The response was “Right, we’re batting,” not “You’re a bloody idiot, you’ve just cost us the game!” I think too much emphasis is placed on the toss and sometimes teams and captains get deflated if they don’t get to do what they wanted. Before the first ball’s bowled they’re already behind the eight ball.
‘If you look at the question of when a toss is important in a cricket match, most people would have said that this one was because it was a significant advantage to put the side in and bowl first. We batted first and won the Test match by 268 runs, so I believe it’s how you play as a team, not whether the coin comes up heads or tails, that counts.’
This is an important message for all captains at all levels. If you play well, you generally get what you deserve, so don’t get too hung up about losing the toss. I could often feel the tension in the Kent dressing-room before the toss, both as a captain and as a player. If the wicket was a touch damp, the batters would be hoping we’d stick the opposition in, and if it was flat the bowlers – particularly halfway through a long season – would be desperate to put their feet up for a day and a half. As Brearley says, again in The Art of Captaincy:
I often found that it was worth asking both batsmen and bowlers to give their opinions (on the pitch); human nature being what it is, both groups veer towards putting off the moment of personal performance; thus batsmen are inclined to see a greenness in the pitch that is totally imaginary, if not hallucinatory, from the bowlers’ point of view.
From my own experience, playing for Sevenoaks Vine in the Kent League, it was often an advantage to bowl first, as the team batting would then have to take ten wickets later to win the game outright, which is a tough task in 50 overs. Captains would rarely look at how a pitch might behave, but would just bowl out of habit, look to keep the runs to a minimum and chase as low a score as possible. Losing the toss and finding yourself batting would invariably feel like a disaster and you’d start the game on the back foot.
Australia had levelled the 1997 series at Old Trafford and grabbed the momentum. They won the next Test at Headingley by an innings in a match where Jason Gillespie emerged from the shadow of McGrath and Warne to grab centre stage. ‘Gillespie was a great foil to the other two, because he had great pace and could swing the ball out,’ Taylor said. ‘At Leeds he was formidable, charging down the hill, bowling 90 mph booming “outies”, which was great to watch from first slip but perhaps less so if you’d been the batsman.’
Gillespie took 7 for 37 as England again failed to reach 200, before hundreds from Matthew Elliott and Ricky Ponting put Australia out of sight. McGrath and Warne shared 14 wickets between them in the fifth Test as Australia retained the Ashes at a canter and although England fought back to win an extraordinary match at the Oval – a recalled Phil Tufnell taking 11 wickets – Taylor shares Atherton’s assertion that England were no closer to beating Australia than they had been 18 months before. ‘I thought the England side were better in 1997 than they had been in 1993 and 1994–95,’ he said. ‘They had much more of a team feel about them, and a bit more mongrel, but I think we were better, too. If it hadn’t been for my batting woes at the beginning of the tour, which definitely distracted the team, we would have been harder to beat than we eventually were.’
Taylor’s third Ashes triumph against Alec Stewart’s side of 1998–99 was all the more laudable as Warne played only in the last Test of the series at the SCG. The 3–1 scoreline was the same margin of victory as Australia had achieved four years earlier.
Having captained for exactly 50 Tests, and broken the world record for the most Test catches in his last Test on his home ground, Taylor retired. There was no announcement ahead of the series, no great fanfare. He simply got the job done and then quietly announced he was going. It was typical Taylor: on his terms, understated and dignified. The previous year he had led Australia to a series win in Pakistan, back where his captaincy had started. In the second Test in Peshawar, he equalled Sir Don Bradman’s Australian Test record score of 334 not out before declaring on himself overnight. The respect to be had in deferring to the Don was worth more to Taylor than any potential glory he might have enjoyed by eclipsing the great man. Most important of all, though, his declaration gave his team the best chance of winning. His demeanour after his triple century was no different to when he had recorded a pair in Karachi four years earlier. If ever there was a captain who treated Kipling’s ‘twin impostors’ the same, it was Taylor.
Australia trained on under Taylor. Border had stopped the rot of the early 1980s and turned a group of players into a unit in his image: tough and hard to beat. Taylor allowed his players more freedom of expression, unshackling them much as Vaughan would later do for England after Hussain had strengthened their backbone. Taylor inherited a very fine side, but he left them as the best team in the world and on the verge of greatness.
He was named as Australian of the Year on Australia Day 1999. Having stood down from office, he still commanded the respect of a nation. To this day, he continues to be an exemplary ambassador for the game, as well as a popular television commentator.