Haha, what? Who said he did? You're essentially charging he bowled poo and took poles which is just a smidge harsh.
Accusation of nationalistic bias is a nothing statement and a cheap shot.
He didn't bowl poor, but his wicket taking deliveries weren't unplayable. I wouldn't begrudge him taking wickets from the edges, however that will be slightly nulled in England with slower and less pacey wickets.
Says who? It's a pretty non-sensical thing to say anyway since just about everyone uses Dopler speed guns anyway. If the guns used in Aus are inaccurate, so are the rest.
Not nowadays, but certainly up to 2001. There wasn't a uniform speed gun used across the world. A number of people have a theory those used in Pakistan were reading too fast, this of course pissed-off a lot of Shoaib fans. Lol
I still think you're focussing in on his top pace. His average pace, without knowing for sure myself, would have dropped 5km/h over his career. Max. No doubt he had more zip early on, as is to be expected, but even then all that really meant was that he was more consistently in the 135-140km/h bracket than ratcheting it up past 145km/h regularly.
TBH, it's a moot point. Even when bowling slower, McGrath was still beating top players with movement and doing it just as well as he was with a little more speed. Harking way back to the key point, there's no way McGrath was merely an accurate bowler who waited for mistakes from the batsmen.
McGrath still beat top batsmen when his speed diminished, but he didn't beat them as regularly as when he was also bowling around 85mph.
The fact he was a great bowler didn't change but I definitely noticed less play and misses, less lbw and less clean bowled once McGrath's pace came down. Of course the deliveries to Vaughan and Pietersen in the 2005 Ashes were quality unplayable dleiveries.
He wasn't JUST a line and length bowler who waited for batsmen to make mistakes, but he got alot of wickets that way.
This I've never heard before
maybe I should have contested all those speeding fines....
It's pretty well known. There wasn't a uniform speed gun used across the world.
You should've contested the speeding fines considering some guns used by police are altered to read a faster speed (conspiracy theory!). You wouldn't get them to admit it though.
You seem to have missed the part in that video you showed us where Siddle got repeated edges. I remember watching the telecast and the commentators were saying some of Siddle's deliveries had moved into or away from the batsman off the deck.
A ball swinging a foot and a half looks impressive, but not doing that doesn't mean you get 'no movement'.
The delivery that jagged in off the pitch and took the top of McKenzie's off stump certainly owned him.
I said earlier his best deliveries didn't take wickets, but I'm simply talking about the wickets he did get. You can't afford to play that many careless shots in test cricket.
McKenzie's bat was nowhere near the ball and the ball seamed IN, is that not a complete misjudgement?
He is really out of his depth at test level IMO. If he played the correct line and it jagged in between his bat and legs then sure, great delivery, but he was so far away from the ball that I wonder what the hell he was trying to do.