Australian pace legend Glenn McGrath felt the pitches were too batsmen-friendly these days. “This is one of the main reasons teams struggle abroad. They are playing on similar wickets,” he said.
McGrath, Director of Coaching, MRF Pace Foundation, was in conversation with N. Ram, Chairman, Kasturi & Sons Limited. The event was organised by the Chennai International Centre at the Madras School of Economics campus here on Friday.
The former pace ace faced some incisive questions from Ram capably and there was applause for the engaging session from an appreciative audience at the end of it all.
Assessing the surfaces in Australia, McGrath said, “In my days, the tracks in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide — they were all different. There was pace and bounce at Perth and Brisbane, while the spinners would come into play more at Melbourne and Sydney. Now, all that has changed. All the surfaces favour the batsmen, are similar in nature.”
McGrath said drop-in pitches did not help matters either. “A normal wicket deteriorates gradually and we can see cracks develop on the fourth or fifth day. But with drop-in pitches, the surface on the final day behaves like [it does] on day two or three.”
The Aussie paceman believed that contemporary batsmen — T20 cricket being a reason — lacked the patience to build an innings in demanding conditions. “The batsmen are not prepared to bat through the tough periods of play, not prepared to do the difficult job of grinding it out. They are trying to play too many shots, their defensive play is not good enough.”
He added, “They are not prepared to adapt. They are far too aggressive.”
When Ram asked him to name the cricketer whose ‘cricketing intelligence’ impressed him the most, McGrath replied, “It would be Shane Warne, the best Test captain Australia never had. Warnie read the game very well, was a showman and loved the big moments.”
Border, the best skipper
On the best captain he played under, McGrath said, “Allan Border built the team in very tough times, Mark Taylor, very shrewd, wanted to win from the first ball, Steve Waugh wanted to crush opponents from the first delivery while Ricky Ponting, who had a hard act to follow, still did a very good job winning two World Cups. But the captain of my all-time best Australian XI would be Border.”
Sharing his thoughts on two illustrious batsmen from his time, Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara, McGrath said, “You could tie down Sachin, contain him with good deliveries. It was hard to do that with Lara, very difficult to contain him.”
McGrath, who at one point in his career played 53 Tests without a break, said he would not have been happy with the present-day rotation policy for pacemen. “I would have wanted to play every match,” he said.
He complimented Courtney Walsh, Curtly Ambrose and Kapil Dev for their long and enduring careers, and said effective and injury-free pace bowling was about the “right body type combined with the right action.”
He stressed the importance of technical skills, mental strength and thought processes. Talking about the MRF Pace Foundation, McGrath highlighted the contribution of head coach M. Senthilnathan, and was pleased with the progress of young pacemen Aswin Crist and K. Vignesh this season.
Rahul Mammen of MRF introduced McGrath and Ram to the audience.
‘I’ve been sledged by Tendulkar’
“I have been sledged by Sachin Tendulkar,” revealed Glenn McGrath while speaking on the issue of Australia’s on-field behaviour. He said, “Every team in the world sledges. But when the Aussies do it, it makes news. When the other teams sledge against us, we keep quiet. The moment the Australians are at it, the others are quick to complain.” McGrath said, “The Australian way is very upfront. We play our cricket with a lot of passion. We say a few things on the field but all is forgotten as we walk off it. It’s a part of Australian culture.”
The Aussie pace legend said Steve Waugh, during his time, had devised a new term for sledging. “He called it gamesmanship.” Asked who the biggest sledger in the Australian team was, McGrath said, “Matthew Hayden was probably the worst. But he was nicely hidden fielding at gully.”
