in later life, he was known for his blunt and critical comments towards modern players, believing the cricket in earlier times to be superior. after steve waugh's team set a world record of consecutive test victories, harvey named three australian teams that he thought to be superiors, saying "no, far from it" in response to the suggestion that waugh's men were the best team in history. he attributed the wins to weak opponents, stating "no i don't think they're up to the world standard they were years ago" and that the 1980s west indies team were far superior. he also criticised the australian team for publicly praising the skills of their opponents, believing that they did so to aggrandise their statistical performances against teams he considered to be weak. in 2000, he was named in the australian cricket board's team of the century and criticised modern day batsmen, noting that players in earlier eras had to play on sticky wickets saying "these guys who play out here are a little bit spoilt in my opinion. they play on flat wickets all the time and they grizzle if ... the ball does a little bit off the pitch, and whatever ... but we had to put up with that" and going to assert his opinion that the current players would be no match.