Glenn McGrath
Every country, even India, have their great fast bowlers. Everyone loves their fast bowlers. But what makes a fast bowler truly great? Some are made great by their pace. Some intimidate with their presence. Some befuddle batsmen with swing and seam movement, or crush toes with deadly yorkers.
In McGrath’s case, it’s a spell of bowling at Lord’s on the first day of the 2005 Ashes that still gives me goosebumps 8 years later. It’s the way he publically targeted the opposition’s top batsmen, and then regularly backed up his words by getting them out again and again and again and again. More times than any other fast bowler to have ever played the game. It’s the way he adapted to every opposition and all conditions and was a success everywhere, despite not having the obvious tools like extreme pace or swing that his more celebrated contemporaries possessed. It was the confidence to name Marcuss Trescothick as his 500[SUP]th[/SUP] victim then go ahead and dismiss him for his 500[SUP]th[/SUP] wicket. It’s the way he was still accurate enough and sharp enough to bounce Kevin Pietersen in an ODI after his Test retirement and break his ribs. Or the way he continued to be great right up until the end, dominating a World Cup dominated by Australians.
But the thing for me, more than anything else that sums up McGrath’s greatness as a bowler is the way that in 2009, nearly 3 years after his Test retirement in an exhibition T20 game against the Australian XI, he told television viewers exactly how he was going to dismiss David Warner. Then went ahead and did it:
His match figures in that game, bowling to Warner, Haddin, Clarke, Dussey, White, Voges and Bailey, were 4-1-18-3 by the way. Not bad for an old codger a few months shy of his 40[SUP]th[/SUP] birthday. There’s no one else I can think of that had such control over his art that he could nominate Warner for a dismissal like that.
Never mind your Larwoods, Lindwalls, Davidsons, Truemans, Lillees, Holdings, Garners, Marshalls, Imrans, Ambroses, Wasims, Waqars, Donalds or Steyns. Glenn McGrath was the greatest of them all.
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10. JM Anderson
11. GD McGrath