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Motivation Quote by Steve Waugh

"Geez, I just played cricket because I loved the game. I never thought about it much, never really had any formal coaching"

About this Quote

There is a disarming kind of swagger in Steve Waugh playing down his own making: “Geez” kicks the door in like a locker-room aside, then the sentence keeps shrinking his legend into something almost accidental. For an athlete whose career is synonymous with grit and planning, the offhand tone is the point. It performs a version of authenticity sports culture loves: greatness as a byproduct of passion, not a laboratory result.

The subtext is older than modern high-performance cricket. Waugh is sketching a generational contrast between backyard apprenticeship and today’s pipeline of academies, private coaches, data, and early specialization. “I never thought about it much” isn’t anti-intellectual; it’s an argument for feel over theory, for playing instincts you can’t spreadsheet. “Never really had any formal coaching” lands as both humblebrag and quiet critique: if I got here without the apparatus, maybe the apparatus isn’t the soul of the thing.

Context matters: Waugh’s public persona has long been stoic, unsentimental, tough-minded. This quote softens that image without betraying it. He’s not selling magic; he’s defending a romance of sport that’s increasingly under threat - the idea that love of the game is a training method. It’s a comforting story for fans and a challenging one for systems: passion scales poorly, but it’s still the raw material no program can manufacture.

Quote Details

TopicSports
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Waugh, Steve. (2026, January 15). Geez, I just played cricket because I loved the game. I never thought about it much, never really had any formal coaching. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/geez-i-just-played-cricket-because-i-loved-the-162389/

Chicago Style
Waugh, Steve. "Geez, I just played cricket because I loved the game. I never thought about it much, never really had any formal coaching." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/geez-i-just-played-cricket-because-i-loved-the-162389/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Geez, I just played cricket because I loved the game. I never thought about it much, never really had any formal coaching." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/geez-i-just-played-cricket-because-i-loved-the-162389/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Steve Waugh (born June 2, 1965) is a Athlete from Australia.

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