Steve Waugh: World Cup-winning captain turned franchise flag-bearer in the Netherlands

Steve Waugh is one of the most decorated cricketers the game has ever produced. As Australia's Test captain, he won 41 of 57 matches, led his country on a world-record 16-match winning streak, and lifted the ICC Cricket World Cup in 1999. He finished his international career with 10,927 Test runs at an average of 51.06, including 32 centuries. 

When he walked off the Sydney Cricket Ground for the final time in January 2004, he did so as the most successful Test captain in the history of the sport.

But Steve Waugh's story did not end there.

Since retiring from professional cricket, Waugh has built a second career defined by purpose and impact. He was named Australian of the Year in 2004, recognising his decade of humanitarian work supporting children and communities across India and Australia. 

He is one of only three Australians ever inducted into the Laureus World Sports Academy, the fourth cricketer to receive that honour alongside Ian Botham, Kapil Dev and Viv Richards. He served an eight-year term on the MCC World Cricket Committee. In 2023, he was made a Life Member of the Sydney Cricket Ground, the highest individual honour the SCG bestows.

Away from sport, Waugh co-founded the Steve Waugh Foundation with his wife Lynette, providing critical support to Australian children living with rare diseases. He has authored 13 books, selling more than 750,000 copies worldwide. He has mentored athletes across cricket, football and the Olympics. He is a brand ambassador, a business leader and, above all, a man who has never stopped competing.

Alongside his humanitarian work, Waugh developed a deep and serious passion for photography, one that grew during those same Indian tours. In the 1990s he spent his days off wandering the streets of India's cities with his camera absorbing and documenting the world around him. 

He wanted to understand the culture, the people, the chaos. Over the course of his career and the years that followed, Waugh captured tens of thousands of images, illustrating most of his thirteen books with his own photographs. In 2020 he released The Spirit of Cricket: India, a book of more than 200 of his personal favourite photographs taken across decades of visits, from the Maidans of Mumbai to the backstreets of Kolkata to a game of cricket played in the foothills of the Himalayas. One of his photographs won the Wisden Photograph of the Year. 

He has exhibited his work across Australia. Photography, like everything else Waugh commits to, was approached without compromise.

In January 2026, Waugh made his major return to professional cricket after retirement, joining the ETPL as co-owner of the Amsterdam Flames alongside Olympic gold medallist Jamie Dwyer and businessman Tim Thomas. The Flames have attracted some of the biggest names in the Australian game, with Mitchell Marsh confirmed as captain, Steve Smith and Tim David signed as overseas players.

For Waugh, the ETPL is not a nostalgia project. It is a conviction.

"I've always been selective about where I invest my time and energy in cricket," he said at the franchise launch in Sydney. "The sky's the limit for T20. You are only limited by your imagination."

Europe is cricket's next frontier. Steve Waugh was one of the first to back it.