One hundred and thirty-eight

Steve Waugh does not appear on the Adelaide scorecard.

He had played the first three Tests of the series and been dropped. The man who replaced him at number six is listed as making his Test debut, and his surname is the same.

What he walked into

Australia were 124 for five. Mark Taylor had been run out for 5, Geoff Marsh caught for 37, Allan Border bowled for 12, Dean Jones leg before for a duck at the same score, and David Boon caught for 49.

Five wickets, one of them the captain, on the first morning of a Test his brother had been dropped from.

He made 138 from 188 balls with eighteen fours.

At the close of play on the opening day he was 116 not out. He and Greg Matthews added 171 for the sixth wicket, and Australia reached 386.

Full scorecard: Australia v England, 4th Test, Adelaide, 25–29 January 1991 →

The number

One hundred and thirty-eight is a good Test hundred by any measure. In the specific circumstances it is close to unimprovable.

He had been the best batsman in Australia not playing Test cricket for about three years. His brother had made 177 not out at Headingley in 1989 and averaged 126 in that Ashes series, and then declined, and the selectors had run out of reasons to keep picking one twin over the other.

The decision was made and the man selected answered it inside a day.

The other debutant that summer

Nobody else made a debut in that Test. Twelfth man for Australia was Terry Alderman.

England used eighteen players in the series and lost 3–0. Australia used thirteen, and the change everybody remembers was at number six, and it worked on the first afternoon.

What is not on the card

Anything about what it was like.

Neither brother has ever said much. Steve Waugh has written several books and describes the dropping in a paragraph. Mark Waugh has been asked about the debut a great many times and answers about the cricket.

There is no account by a selector explaining how the decision was reached, whether the relationship was discussed, or whether anybody considered the possibility that it would go exactly the way it went.

What happened to both of them

Steve Waugh came back and played 168 Tests, captained Australia to sixteen consecutive wins, and finished with more than ten thousand runs.

Mark Waugh played 128 and finished with more than eight thousand.

So the selection was not a mistake in either direction. Both men were good enough, one of them had to wait, and the record contains no evidence at all about what a few weeks of that felt like in a family of two.

The rest of the match

Graham Gooch made 87 and 117 and took the match award. England, following 157 behind, were set 472 and finished on 335 for five with the match drawn.

Boon made 121 in the second innings. Border made 83 not out. Mark Waugh made 23.

Australia led the series 2–0 and won it 3–0. Almost nothing else about the fourth Test at Adelaide in 1991 is remembered by anybody, and the reason it is remembered at all is a name that appears once, under Test debut.

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No. 2 in The Eleven, a series of 5.

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