Glenn McGrath Line and Strength Read online

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Glenn McGrath

  Line and Strength: The Complete Story

  ePub ISBN 9781864714814

  Kindle ISBN 9781864717402

  A William Heinemann book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by William Heinemann in 2008

  This edition published in 2010

  Copyright © Ooh Aah Promotions Pty Ltd ATF McGrath Promotions Trust 2008

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  McGrath, Glenn.

  Line and Strength: the complete story/Glenn McGrath, Daniel Lane.

  ISBN 978 1 86471 122 6 (pbk).

  McGrath, Glenn.

  McGrath, Jane.

  Cricket players – Australia – Biography.

  Cricket – Australia – Bowling.

  Cricket – Australia – Biography.

  Cancer – Patients – Australia – Biography.

  Other Authors/Contributors: Lane, Daniel (Daniel Q.)

  796.398092

  Cover photograph: Hamish Blair/Getty Images

  Cover design by Darian Causby/www.highway51.com.au

  Internal design and typesetting by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Printed in Australia by Griffin Press, an accredited ISO AS/NZS 14001:2004 Environmental Management System printer

  For Jane, James and Holly

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword by Dennis Lillee

  Preface by Glenn McGrath

  Part One

  1 The Boy Who Couldn’t Bowl

  2 A Skinned Rabbit

  3 Narromine Boy

  4 The Straight Shooter

  5 Harsh Lessons

  6 The Heart-to-Heart

  7 Dougie’s Tormentor

  8 The Narromine Express

  9 Making the Grade

  10 The Academy

  11 False Start

  12 First Blood

  13 The Bolter

  14 Baptism of Fire

  15 Pirate of the Caribbean

  16 Soul Mate

  Part Two

  17 Lord of Lord’s

  18 Reality

  19 Life is Beautiful

  20 Spirit of the Rhino

  21 Milestones and Magic

  22 Crushing the Kiwis

  23 Last Man Standing

  24 Dissecting the Pigeon

  25 Mind Over Batter

  26 Body of Evidence

  27 Spin + Seam = Lethal

  28 Ankle Tapped

  29 Fast Bowlers’ Cartel

  30 Under Pressure

  31 Foundation of Hope

  32 To Sledge or Not to Sledge

  33 Bodyline and Language

  34 The Stubborn Foe

  Part Three

  35 Beginning of the End

  36 Stumps

  37 Tears and Cheers

  38 SCG Magic

  39 Heavyweight Champions of the World

  40 The Sunset

  41 The Legend of Glenn McGrath

  Epilogue

  Career Highlights

  Statistics

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword

  by Dennis Lillee

  A lot of things may come between a 10-year-old’s dream to play for his country and a 20-year-old actually getting to the stage where he might. He would, however, have a far greater chance of making it if he really believed he could...

  I wrote that in my book The Art of Fast Bowling way back in 1977. I have no idea if Glenn McGrath ever read that passage, but by representing Australia in 124 Tests and 250 One Day Internationals, he’s proof that I told the truth all those years ago.

  Glenn didn’t really start to play cricket until he was in his mid-teens – and that’s quite late. In this book he tells the story of how he worked to fulfil his secret dream of representing Australia by practising religiously, bowling at a 44-gallon drum behind his father’s machinery shed.

  McGrath did that even though few people at his junior club thought he had any ability as a bowler. I think it says a lot about his drive and his determination that he single-mindedly pursued a dream many thought was way beyond his reach.

  But the people of the Backwater Cricket Club in outback New South Wales needn’t punish themselves for not seeing anything special in their most famous player. You see, when I first laid eyes on him 17 or 18 years ago, I definitely didn’t earmark him as a Test bowler in the making – let alone as one of the game’s greatest. Glenn was raw – red raw – when I watched him in the Sydney Cricket Ground’s practice nets. He was in a NSW fast bowlers’ squad that had been formed as part of a national initiative to identify up-and-comers with potential.

  In my role as the head consultant, I travelled around Australia to cast my eyes over the young bowlers. I’d either change inefficient or injury-prone actions or techniques, finetune individual actions, or offer bowlers advice when, and if, it was needed. My first reaction, watching Glenn bowl, was not that he was a champion in the making. He bowled okay, but to be brutally honest, I saw nothing to write home about.

  I thought he’d need to develop his core strength if he was to have any hope of even surviving the fast bowler’s game. He was wiry, and indeed back then he was painfully thin. However, no-one realised he was doing it so tough financially that he often ate a Mars Bar for dinner because it was all he could afford.

  Glenn couldn’t have been any older than 19 when he was in that squad, but what his progression to international cricketer highlighted was that a player can change from his late teenage years to his early twenties. Glenn’s confidence, strength, ability and skills changed dramatically in the space of those few short years; and another thing I’ve noted is that each body responds differently.

  The ties that bind cricket’s great fast bowlers are their tremendous work ethic along with a level of determination and desire that borders on a form o
f madness.

  You need the madness. McGrath definitely has it.

  People who watch cricket on the television might think fast bowlers have an easy gig – my goodness, they’re wrong. A fast bowler’s lot is tough. They’re often performing in temperatures well above the 30-degree mark, and even when their body aches and their feet blister and bleed, they must push on and try to get the breakthrough wicket the team is sweating on.

  It’s those demands that sort the strong-willed from the rest. Fast bowling is a pursuit where blokes with weak tickers fall by the wayside and perish. One or two might sneak through and last for a short time, but in my view, Glenn McGrath – a bowler who has endured the test of time – is one of a unique breed of athlete. They’re big-hearted, they’re tough and they’re special. And they deserve our admiration.

  McGrath’s longevity alone is something that must be admired. He competed at the highest level for 14 years and his career spanned 124 Tests – at the time of his retirement it was the greatest number by a fast bowler.

  I attribute Glenn’s ability to play that many Tests to several factors, including:

  • his pain threshold;

  •his strength and conditioning, which were excellent; and

  • his action – McGrath had a machine-like action that was economical and easy on his body.

  I took a genuine interest in Glenn’s career. I worked with him on a number of occasions, firstly with the NSW development squad at the SCG nets, then at the Cricket Academy in Adelaide, and after that in numerous private sessions. Over the years I found him to be likeable, respectful, professional and willing to take advice on board. McGrath was a model student – and now he has plenty to offer the next generation of pacemen as a teacher and mentor.

  Glenn McGrath will be remembered as one of cricket’s greatest fast bowlers, and for good reason – he took 563 Test wickets and created all sorts of records and milestones along the way.

  He has long been compared to bowlers from other eras, but I don’t like doing that because it’s a pointless and fruitless exercise. It’s impossible to compare players from different eras because no matter how hard you try or how well you think it’ll work, it just doesn’t. I know people will continue to make comparisons but I think that’s unfair, because all you can go by is a player’s statistics – and they don’t always tell the true story.

  I would prefer to celebrate Glenn’s career – and everyone else’s, for that matter – by remembering how good he was during his own time. Compare him to his peers. Glenn is in good company – Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram, Shaun Pollock, Courtney Walsh, Allan Donald and Curtly Ambrose, to name but a few.

  I am thrilled and honoured to have been invited to write the foreword for Glenn McGrath – Line and Strength. Glenn has a great and powerful story to tell. He proves that hard work and sheer determination can be rewarded. After all, he rose from obscurity in the New South Wales outback to become one of cricket’s great fast bowlers.

  Away from the field, Glenn joined his wife Jane in meeting head-on the challenge of breast cancer. The dignified way they’ve conducted their battle has helped the public gain a greater awareness of an insidious disease, and their actions and fundraising feats through the McGrath Foundation have given hope to thousands upon thousands of people.

  There is no doubt Jane is a wonderful, special human being – her courage has moved me. Yet Glenn has also impressed me. I am certain many others in his position would have wilted; they would have given up the ghost. A few might have said ‘I don’t have the guts for this’ or ‘Life’s unfair’, but while he made it clear that Jane and their kids, James and Holly, were (and still are) his priority, Glenn soldiered along quietly on the cricket field.

  In any era, in any team, Glenn McGrath is – in my view – one of life’s true champions.

  Dennis Lillee

  Perth, January 2008

  Preface

  by Glenn McGrath

  In January 2007 I retired from the Australian Test team feeling happy because I knew nothing could be better than bowing out after regaining the Ashes from England in a 5–0 whitewash. There was an incredible sense of emotion and elation as I walked around the Sydney Cricket Ground with my team-mates, holding hands with my children, James and Holly. I didn’t feel the slightest sense of sadness about retiring. I knew I’d reached the end; my body told me that. And even more importantly, I’d realised that those special moments I was missing in the life and times of my family were too great ... the moments had become weeks at a time, and I didn’t like it.

  Before working on Line and Strength, I hadn’t sat back and thought too much about my journey – from bowling at an old 44-gallon drum when there were doubts about my ability, to fulfilling my dream of opening the attack for Australia. Now I’ve gone through that process, I feel humbled – and I feel blessed. I have benefited greatly from the goodwill and generosity of so many people that I could never begin to thank them all in this preface. What I will say is that their examples and thoughtfulness made an impact on me, and I have attempted to display the same level of kindness to young fast bowlers looking to me for help and guidance.

  Having a book written about my life has been strange because I have never seen myself as anything more than an ordinary person. It is a bit daunting to realise my innermost thoughts are there for others to read. I have been honest and I have addressed a few matters I would really rather forget.

  My life’s greatest reward has been my marriage to Jane and having our children. I dedicate all I have achieved to her, and I want Jane to know the love, strength and pride I have drawn from having her as my soul mate. To James and Holly – you gave me an extra motivation and reason to push on during those days it would have been all too easy just to give up. My mum, dad, sister Donna and little brother Dale were often in my thoughts during this project, and it is my hope they realise how special they are to me.

  I offer a big thanks to those people who cheered me through thick and thin, and I hope you realise I never took your support for granted. It was generous of you and I valued it.

  I write this message from Delhi, India, where I am playing in the Indian Premier League Twenty20 competition – and it is amazing. Had anyone told me 16 months ago that I’d be playing in India, I’d have laughed and called them crazy. It simply proves that life truly is a surprise packet and that we have to make the most of it. If anyone is to take anything away from this book, I hope it is that they make the most of their opportunities and never, ever listen to those people who say they can’t do something.

  Glenn McGrath

  Delhi, May 2008

  Part One

  1

  The Boy Who Couldn’t Bowl

  Glenn was just too erratic.

  Backwater under-16s bowler Mark Munro

  on Glenn McGrath’s bowling

  The sun was deep into its descent over the horizon of western New South Wales, its long rays streaked across the outback sky, lighting it with colours that looked to the boy like smears of drizzled honey, burnt orange, molten gold and bronze. Normally Glenn McGrath would have paused to admire the view. Although he was only 16 years old, he knew enough to realise that appreciating nature’s wonders – sunsets, sunrises, lightning storms – is nutritious for the soul. But on this particular evening, McGrath didn’t have time to spare. He turned his back on God’s grandeur, determined to finish his final ‘job’ of the day before his mum called him in for dinner.

  McGrath was bone-tired and weary. He and Dale, his 14-year-old brother, had spent yet another day toiling in the back paddock of the family’s Narromine property, sowing as many as they could of its 1000 acres for the next season’s wheat crop. In years to come, McGrath would say that not even the unforgiving heat and humidity of Pakistan or India were as exhausting as the time he had replaced his father as the man of the family. Glenn and Dale were boys doing men’s work,
thanks to the age-old farmer’s curse: crippling bills and scarce income. The account book for the 1987 season looked grim and the boys’ father, Kevin, was working as a road-train driver, transporting livestock from the Northern Territory and central Queensland to the abattoir at nearby Dubbo.

  As McGrath remembers, working the family property was a big responsibility: the family’s livelihood depended on the brothers doing a good job, and the task was one that could quite easily have frightened him, had he allowed it to. But his younger brother was born to work the land. Dale would lighten the mood by waiting for Glenn to lift a heavy sack of grain from the ute – then he’d leap from the vehicle onto his brother’s back. The extra weight would crumple Glenn’s skinny legs and he’d crash to the ground in an angry cloud of dust. Dale would laugh loudly before running for his life as his brother picked himself up and hurled abuse, calling him ‘a bloody pest’.

  ‘It was a tough time,’ Dale agrees. ‘But we got through it. I liked to stir him up. But Glenn could always find something – a bit of rock, some fibro or a golf ball – and nine times out of ten he’d hit me.’

  The weight of responsibility McGrath carried for those few weeks as the man of the house was heavy, like the sack of grain, but he steadied himself by accepting that he had to deal with the situation as best as he could; it was the responsibility he had inherited as the elder son. What he felt, but couldn’t then properly articulate, was the need to worry only about controlling the controllable. This was a mantra that would serve him well in later life: McGrath would call upon it regularly, when he’d challenge the world to do its worst while he tried to do his best as a cricketer and a devoted husband.