AAP – Australia cricket captain Steve Waugh wants shorter Ashes tours anddescribed some fixtures on this year’s successful campaign as “a waste oftime”

Adrian Warren30-Aug-2001AAP – Australia cricket captain Steve Waugh wants shorter Ashes tours anddescribed some fixtures on this year’s successful campaign as “a waste oftime”.Waugh and several of his colleagues who were part of both the triumphantTest and one-day squads returned to Australia today after completing agruelling three-month itinerary.The Australians schedule included 21 matches, including six threeorfour-dayers against county teams, some of which Waugh felt weren’t needed bythe tourists.”Three months is just too long to be away I think and it can be unhealthyfor everyone,” Waugh said.”You are in very close proximity to all the squad and it’s a long time to betogether and people obviously are missing their families.”So I think in future some of the county games are not needed, they are awaste of time basically half of them. Probably only two or three were goodmatches.”Waugh today admitted there was a danger Australia could look past its nextassignment against New Zealand as it awaits a showdown against South Africa,its closest challenger at the top of the ICC Test championship.Australia holds a slender lead over South Africa on the points table and thetwo teams will play three Tests here in December and January before hostingthe return series in February and March.Waugh admitted his team would already be thinking about the South Africamatches during the three-Test home series against New Zealand in Novemberand December.”New Zealand are a good cricket side and they are one of these sides thatare improving, so they will be hard to beat,” Waugh said.”But there’s no doubt we will be looking towards South Africa and they willbe looking at us. I think its a showdown for the number one Test side in theworld, so there is a danger element there that you can look too far ahead.”We’ve got to obviously make sure we play well against New Zealand, but atthe same time, we will be starting to prepare mentally and probably writingthings down about the South African players before we get to play them.”While Waugh praised bowling stalwarts Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath fortheir efforts in England, he made a point of complimenting his batsmen.Five of them managed at least one Test century with four of them averagingover 50.England never came close to bowling out Australia twice and only once did itdismiss Waugh’s side for under 400.”We probably surprised ourselves with the way we batted over there.”I thought the batting was superb and our general cricket all round waspretty good.”We were aggressive the whole time and positive and we played to win everyday of the tour.”