da betsul： CANTERBURY, England – Steve Waugh wants to rediscover the beauty ofcricket.
Paul Mulvey19-Aug-2002CANTERBURY, England – Steve Waugh wants to rediscover the beauty ofcricket.The Australian Test captain admits the magic of the game which capturedhim as a boy is sometimes lost amid the money and pressure of modern dayprofessionalism, especially when things aren’t going your way.And things didn’t go all his way last year.Although Australia had resounding series wins over South Africafollowing a lucky escape against New Zealand, Waugh had a rare barrenpatch of form, was dropped from the one day team and was also underpressure off the field.He arrived in Canterbury yesterday for a 21-day stint with Englishcounty side Kent in a bid to find form before Australia’s series againstPakistan and England and rekindle his passion for the game.”I just want to get out there and enjoy my cricket. Last year wasn’t asenjoyable as I would have liked compared to the previous 16 years,” hesaid.”This year my goal is to enjoy my cricket, see the beauty of the gameand see the little things that when you played the game when you weresix or seven years old in the backyard were why you loved the game.”Sometimes that can be lost in the professionalism of the game and themoney and the pressure.”Waugh said his disillusionment last summer was the result of severalfactors.He scored a poor 314 runs from nine Tests at an average of 24.15 after adeep vein thrombosis developed on his return from the Ashes series inEngland opened his domestic summer under a cloud which did not lift.And as his form suffered, the Australian press started to question hisposition.”There are always issues which not everyone’s aware of, it was adifficult time in some ways,” he said.”I felt the media changed a little bit last year in the way they dealtwith the Australian side.”I just came off the DVT. I had the baggage of the fact Justin Langerwas dropped and Michael Slater was dropped and I was a selector whichwasn’t easy. It’s always tough to drop your teammates.”And things just didn’t quite work out on the field.”It’s no excuse, but I just didn’t quite enjoy cricket as much as Icould have.”Waugh starts his campaign of rediscovery in Kent’s one day match againstLeicestershire in Canterbury on Wednesday.