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Don the Best, Tendulkar Second Best, says Waugh

Former Australian captain Steve Waugh reckons his countryman the great Don Bradman is the greatest to have ever played the game and said that Indian batting pillar Sachin Tendulkar is the second best.

“Don Bradman is the greatest, there is no debate. Don is the number one and then the rest and Tendulkar amongst the rest, probably is as good as anyone. So, legitimately, he may be the second best cricketer to have played the game. But people will say so for Gary Sobers, W G wells too, so it is difficult to say,” Waugh said on Wednesday.

Waugh is in Abu Dhabi for the Laureus World Sports Awards and is an Academy member.

Waugh was full of praise for Afghanistan and said that the country will go on to do much better. Giant-killers Afghanistan worked their way and qualified for this year’s Twenty20 World Cup to be held in the West Indies.

“It is a great sporting story. It is a potential movie. It is a fairytale, the best story of the year. Players learning cricket in the refugee camps and doing so well is a great story. I think with the Twenty20 World Cup coming up, this will be one of the future stories of the event,” he said.

Waugh tipped India and Australia as favourites to win the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 to be held in the subcontinent.

“Australia have a very good record. India are also very hard to beat in India so they will be favourites. There is also New Zealand. I think there are probably five teams capable of winning the World Cup but India and Australia will be favourites,” said Waugh, a two-time World Cup-winning captain.

India top the Test format but Waugh felt it will be tough for them to do it across all formats and hold onto their ranking for a long period of time.

“I don’t think anyone will hold the No.1 ranking because we have three formats of the game and with niggling injuries and so many tours, it is very hard to be consistent. May be they can hold on to the Test ranking but it is very difficult to dominate all formats of the game,” he said.

Waugh was not entirely comfortable with the Umpire Referral System and said maybe it could go to the umpires. “I’m at times very confused about it. I was initially against it but later I read about it and saw decisions going right. But for the last 12 months, some of the decisions didn’t seem right, which showed the technology is not completely full proof now,” he said and added: “The technology has to be better then what it is now or may be it could be back to the umpires. They could ask for 2-3 referrals rather than the players.”

But Waugh said the standard of umpires too needs to imrove. “But then some will have arguments that we don’t have enough good umpires to ask for a referral at all times. So, we have to get the umpires to the standard of Simon Taufel, who is very confident. That will be the ideal situation but i don’t know how to get that. It is a very difficult situation,” he added.

Waugh was worried about the decline of quality fast bowlers in the Test format and said that the Twenty20 format was to blame.

Countryman Brett Lee retired from Tests because of a string of injuries but will play the shorter formats of the game.

“It is dangerous for Test cricket that we are losing fast bowlers. It is a Twenty20 influence. Fast bowlers definitely have a lot of stress and it is very demanding. I think they realise that they have few years of cricket in them. They get three times more money bowling four overs in Twenty20. So, we had Flintoff, Brett, Bond deciding not to play Test cricket, which is a shame,” he said.