Glenn McGrath, easily Australia’s most successful fast bowler ever, with a staggering 949 international wickets, is currently the director of the MRF Pace Foundation, and has spent a lot of time working with India’s current fast bowling crop. As India prepares to defend its World Cup title next week, McGrath shares his thoughts on the Zen of fast bowling, the current Indian attack and the biggest event on the cricket calendar.

You had this incredible run of three World Cups. Your team had a very solid batting core with Ponting, Gilchrist and Hayden — batsmen around whom the whole team revolved. Do you think Australia has quite the same batting strength today?

Obviously, they don’t have the same experience, there’s no doubt about that, but they’re getting there. The way Dave Warne has matured — clearly he’s been playing Test cricket more... You’ve got younger guys coming in.

Glenn Maxwell who is an amazing hitter of the ball, we’ve seen some incredible things from him. So yeah, the new generation coming through have the ability. At the end of the day, it’s all about being consistent, and I think Australia’s been playing some good, consistent cricket of late, and that will carry through to the World Cup as well.

A lot of Indian bowlers have gone into MRF Pace Foundation and their actions have changed. It’s often happened that their natural strengths have not actually been used. So what happens? A bowler comes to you with strange action, very different action, what do you try and do with someone like that?

You don’t want to take away what makes them special or unique. The only reason you change an action is if you see they’re going to have problems. So they’ve got an action that’s different, but their shoulders aren’t aligned with their hips. You don’t try to change that action, you try to get the most from that action and get them to be physically strong and fit enough to be able to put up with fast bowling day in and day out. So that’s what we’re looking to do, we’re not looking to create one style of bowler. If everyone bowled like me, it would be pretty boring.

You’ve seen our attack in England… Do we have the core of a good bowling side?

I think what’s happened in India is that they’ve gone away from the basics. And one of the main things that’s let them down is their fielding. You can’t consistently drop catches at this level, and if bowlers are creating chances, and they are going down, catches getting dropped, then bowlers are going to start getting frustrated.

They will start looking for wickets rather than the game plan. Indian bowlers did a good job, didn’t do a great job. They created a lot of chances, but the fact that so many catches went down, actually worked against them and made life so much tougher for India.

You ended your Test match career on this amazing high. You ended your One Day career with the 2007 World Cup on another high. Why did you take the decisions when you did and is there a secret to retiring at the right time?

I don’t think there’s a secret to it, I always wondered if I retired at the right time or went on too long. But all the important decisions I’ve ever made in my life, I’ve just got to a point (when) I’ve just woken up one day and I knew.

From starting a family to getting married to moving to Sydney, even to retiring from the Australian cricket team. I retired in 2007 after the Ashes. [I] played the first Test in Brisbane; took six in the first innings; left Brisbane after a good win, thinking that I’m still very focused on what I want to achieve. I wanted a thousand international wickets both Test and One Day combined. [I] was home for two days before flying down to Adelaide, went to sleep one night very focused. I woke up the next morning and it was just like… like bang, just ike that. I thought those things aren’t important anymore. Something had changed, and I knew then it was time to hang up the boots.

One thing you would say to a fast bowler who was starting off…

It’s hard to narrow it down to one thing — there are four things that I would say stood me in good stead. First thing is selfbelief; you’ve got to believe you’re good enough. When I was growing up, a lot of people told me I was never very good, I was never going to make it in my small country town, I was wasting my time going to Sydney. But I always believed I was good enough. Second, is work ethic. I grew up on a farm so I had that work ethic instilled in me as a young fella. There are no shortcuts, the harder you work, the luckier you get. Third one, is always looking to improve and I always looked to improve myself on my bowling, as a person and as a player. You can never be satisfied with where you are. And lastly, I think, is to have fun. If you have a real passion, a real love for what you do, then you can’t help but be successful.

(Joy Bhattacharjya is project director, FIFA U-17 World Cup, and former team director of the Kolkata Knight Riders)

Related Topics