Steve Waugh has warned fans demanding an immediate resurgence of the national team's fortunes that Australia might never again dominate the world as they did under his, Mark Taylor's and Ricky Ponting's captaincies.
Australia have showed glimpses of promise despite being outplayed by England in the current series. Waugh said talent was coming through the domestic system but felt history was against ''freakish'' eras being repeated
''We may never regain the glory days we had, that was pretty much a freakish era,'' Waugh said. ''If you look at the West Indies, they dominated 10 years before us and [then] we did it. I don't think you'll see a team do that again because there's three forms of the game which means your players will be split up.
''It's hard to be consistent across all those forms and, mentally, players are going to be tired if they're playing the three forms.''
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Waugh, who has just launched his book The Meaning of Luck, was also adamant the selectors needed to show faith in Michael Clarke's men.
''We have to be patient,'' he said. ''I keep saying to people I didn't score a century until my 26th Test [and] I wasn't part of a win until my 13th Test.
''I saw Steve Smith being bagged today that he'd only had two wins out of his first 11 Tests … well, I had none out of 13! We've got to remember you can't always be successful straight away and we have to give these guys a bit of leeway.''
He said the criticism Phillip Hughes was subjected to, and the intense scrutiny Usman Khawaja endured, was negative.
''Phil Hughes has been dropped three times already in his career but he's scored centuries,'' Waugh said. ''He's got 23 first-class hundreds, the guy can obviously play, but we keep messing around with his head. [In] the last four Tests he's played three innings … [that] have been great.''
