Glenn McGrath has proved that to become a legendary bowler all you need is discipline and the will to succeed at the highest level
His supernatural control enables him to probe even the best batsman’s weaknesses. Probably that is why, Glenn McGrath is considered the best and the most effective fast-bowler in the world. Penetrative, economical and adept at getting under a batsman’s skin, McGrath is in fact, the fast bowler’s fast bowler.
During the recently concluded historic series between Australia and India, Glenn McGrath played his 100th Test at Nagpur. He is the eighth Australian to achieve the feat. Steve Waugh (168 Tests) heads the list, followed by Allan Border (156), Mark Waugh (128), Ian Healy (119), Shane Warne (115), David Boon (107), Mark Taylor (104) and McGrath (101).
GLENN DONALD MCGRATH: He first played for Australia after just seven first-class matches with New South Wales. The son of a Narromine sheep and wheat farmer he was originally spotted by the legendary Doug Walters while playing a New South Wales representative match. He had preferred tennis and basketball before being invited to Sydney to play at Grade level.
The first Test player to be chosen while still at the Australian Cricket Academy, McGrath, a right-arm fast bowler and right-hand number eleven batsman, benefited from expert tuition from Dennis Lillee, straightening his line and developing a potent out-swinger. It was his fairy-tale debut with New South Wales, where he took 25 wickets, 3 for 28 against Queensland in the Shield play-off that led him to international limelight. The highlight of his first international season, which included his participation at both Test and One-Day International level, were his dismissals, first of the then South African skipper Hansie Cronje (bowled) and Jonty Rhodes (lbw) on the opening day of the second Test in Cape Town in 1994.
Catapulted from the outback of New South Wales into Test cricket to replace Merv Hughes in 1993, McGrath first became, after a faltering start, the great Australian paceman of his time. He bowls a constant off-stump line and perfect length, gains off-cut and bounce. He has a well aimed bouncer and a well disguised nip-backer, and adjusts exceptionally well to different conditions. He has become a batsman’s nightmare, inside and outside Australia. He is a batting rabbit who has collected more international wickets than runs. But if he applies himself, he has proved to make it work. So much so, that while playing for Worcestershire he won a bet with an Australian teammate by scoring a fifty! After almost a year out of the Test arena with a serious ankle injury, McGrath came back against Sri Lanka earlier this year. In four Tests since, he’s taken 16 wickets and bowled an incredible 52 maidens to give himself an amazing average of 22.31.
In the 101 Tests up to the Mumbai Test, McGrath’s nagging line and length had seen his wickets come at a miserly cost of 21.72 runs apiece. Throw in a cost-conscious economy rate of 2.49 an over and it’s little surprise that he’s taken 454 scalps at the strike rate of 52.2.
Batsman who will testify to the usefulness of his unremitting accuracy include England’s Mike Atherton, whom he grabbed 19 times, while the West Indies Brian Lara has been undone by him on 13 occasions.
In the 22 Tests against England, he’s grabbed 114 scalps, while 97 West Indian batsmen have fallen to his deliveries in 20 matches, with seven and eight five-wicket hauls against the two sides respectively. This out of a total of 24 five-wicket hauls and three ten-wicket hauls.
His strike rate against England is a phenomenal 44.6, while’s he struggled the most against Black Caps with a strike rate of 75.
Just as they did for teammate Shane Warne, things didn’t start brightly, as McGrath secured just 12 wickets at 104 in his first season. Like his bowling, however, he persevered, his most successful season coming in 2001, in which he grabbed 68 scalps, including four five-wicket hauls.
Australia have also won almost 65 per cent of the Tests McGrath has played in, while he has accounted for more than a quarter of the team’s wickets with 20 per cent of his sticks attained by trapping the batsmen in front.
Shane Warne may have more scalps, but McGrath can at least claim to have done so in lesser Tests; he completed the 400 milestone in 87 Tests compared to Warne’s 92. The only other paceman faster than him was Richard Hadlee, who took 80.
The Aussie paceman is also well up there amongst the greats and occupies fourth spot in the list of top wicket-takers. The only fast bowler ahead of him is the great Courtney Walsh, with 519 scalps from 132 caps. And for the sake of keeping him on the pedestal that these figures put him on, we won’t mention his batting figures.
There have been only 30 cricketers in history to have reached the individual target of 100 Tests. The first instance occurred back in 1968. But the next Test centurion didn’t emerge for another thirteen years. By October 1984 this number had doubled to four players. Within the last two years, however, eighteen months to be exact, as many as five men have been added to this list.
The elite roster includes eight Australians, seven each Englishmen and West Indians, four Indians, three Pakistanis and one representative from South Africa.
England’s Michael Colin Cowdrey was the first cricketer to reach the century of Tests matches. He reached this distinction on July 11, 1968 in the third Test against Australia at Edgbaston. The record number of Test matche appearances is 168 by Steve Waugh for Australia between January 1986 to January 2004. Sunil Gavaskar was the first to play in an unbroken sequences of 100 Tests for his country, appearing in 106 consecutive matches.
Glenn McGrath has proved that to become a legendary bowler all you need is discipline and the will to succeed at the highest level 
