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The catch off the debutant’s bowling screamed towards Greg Matthews at pace – and he took it easily. Matthews felt a sense of delight for the new kid, who he thought had a unique sense of cool, with his Victor Trumper-style haircut and his daggy short long pants that didn’t quite cover his ankles. The kid, he thought, had talent.
‘I turned to whoever it was standing next to me in slips and said, “This guy will get a hundred Test wickets,”’ says Matthews. ‘Dude – how wrong was I?’
Injuries to Mike Whitney and Phil Alley fast-tracked McGrath’s entry into the NSW team. Aged 22, he was picked to open the bowling with Wayne Holdsworth against a Tasmanian XI which was – as its opener Dene Hills remembers – ‘building towards something’. He recalls the game as the unveiling of the cornerstones of Australian cricket’s most prosperous reign: Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting.
While Tasmania had enjoyed a confidence-boosting win over competition pacesetters Queensland the week before, their line-up lacked the edge of NSW. Even without Test players Mark Taylor and the Waugh brothers, NSW still boasted the likes of Matthews, Holdsworth, Phil Emery, Steve Small, David Freedman and talented up-and-comers Michael Slater and Michael Bevan. On the Tasmanian side, Ponting arrived in the Harbour City with huge raps.
Before being handed his spurs, McGrath was put to the test in a series of gruelling fitness sessions in the week leading up to the match. Coach Steve Rixon wanted absolute proof the paceman had overcome the side strain that had benched him for two months. He had planned to make McGrath work up a sweat against a Shoalhaven Invitational XI at Nowra on the New South Wales south coast two days before the Shield match, but a deluge foiled that. After being put through his paces in a tough net session overseen by Rixon and Dennis Lillee, McGrath told the media he was ready to seize the moment:
‘It was the best workout I’ve had this season,’ he told The Sydney Morning Herald the day before he took the new ball. ‘I probably would have bowled 20 overs all up, almost at top pace. I didn’t feel at all sore afterwards and nothing when I woke up the next day. I saw the physio yesterday and he’s really happy with the way I’m progressing.’
What McGrath failed to mention was how his thigh had tightened during that bowling session. The twinge he felt as he cooled down would ultimately take some of the gloss off an outstanding debut, which finished with his name being etched in gold on the SCG’s historic honour board.
On 27 January 1993, McGrath arrived at the ground for the first day of play almost an hour before any of his new teammates. Even though the clouds threatened a day interrupted by rain, he didn’t dare run the risk of being late – Marsh had drummed into him the importance of punctuality.
As he waited for a ground attendant to open the home team’s dressing-room, he and Bev sat in the seats outside the then 107-year-old members’ stand and soaked up the scene. Bev had made the trip from the bush and, while she was bursting with pride, neither said much. She instead marvelled at the confident man her son had grown into.
The boy whose Year Five teacher had forced him to sit next to a girl because he was so shy of girls now stood tall. He looked people in the eye when he spoke and he seemed relaxed as strangers offered him their best wishes. He was still the same old Glenn, but he had a spark, and Bev offered Rod Marsh silent thanks for that.
‘Rod took Glenn under his wing in Adelaide,’ says Bev. ‘He assigned him to work in the office with him. But he also invited him to his house to eat dinner with his family on a few occasions and it seemed to help bring him out of his shell. It was pleasing to see.’
Marsh took young cricketers and helped turn them into men by instilling discipline and thrusting responsibilities upon them, but he says taking an interest in the cadets was one of his most important duties.
‘My job was to make them feel at home,’ he says. ‘I remember Glenn came around to our home to do a bit of gardening. One stage he fixed the fence to keep our bloody dog in – I figured he would be better at that kind of thing, coming from the bush. But I’m not at all surprised by what Glenn achieved. I always welcomed his achievements but I was never surprised.’
McGrath wasn’t nervous about the challenge ahead of him at the SCG that day; he was lost in deep thought as he gazed at what had been his field of dreams during those countless afternoons at Lagoona when he’d bowl ball after ball at the 44-gallon drum behind his father’s machinery shed. He’d always thought playing on the SCG would be a special event, but as he sat there that morning he didn’t see the ghosts of the greats who’d played there before him, nor did he feel tingles of excitement run up and down his spine. Instead, he experienced what some might call a revelation.
‘I was surprised,’ he says. ‘I was about to play on the SCG – the hallowed turf – but I didn’t feel at all overwhelmed. I always imagined I’d treat playing there as a great moment in my life. And while it was a great moment, I found I didn’t get caught up in sentiment or a sense of achievement when the time came. It wasn’t until that hour before I made my debut for NSW that I realised playing at the SCG wasn’t my dream – the dream was to play for Australia, and fulfilling that had nothing to do with the ground; it was about playing cricket.’
McGrath didn’t have to wait long to play cricket that day, because Tasmania won the toss and elected to bat. When he was tossed the new ball to bowl at Dene Hills and his fellow opener Nick Courtney, McGrath simply gripped the seam hard and committed himself to rip ’n tear.
‘It was the most basic process,’ he says. ‘I hadn’t seen Dene bat before, so there was no firsthand knowledge of how I should take him on. He was a left-hander; I was told he was particularly strong on the off side. That was it. So I bowled a regulation length going across him. Hills nicked the ball and it went straight to Greg Matthews at second slip – it was my first wicket for the state and I was ecstatic. I didn’t think it could get any better; I felt on top of the world.’
At the time, Hills had no reason to appreciate the significance of entering the scorebook as McGrath’s first ‘kill’ in top-class cricket. But he was definitely annoyed with himself as he trudged slowly back towards the visitors’ dressing-room with the scoreboard reading 1 for 11 – of which he’d contributed only 3 during his 23 minutes at the crease. While Hills was eventually to follow McGrath’s career keenly, albeit from afar (although he would become Australia’s assistant coach in 2007), he has only fuzzy memories of that inaugural encounter.
‘He was six foot five, young and bowled at a rate of knots,’ Hills recalls. ‘I knew nothing about him except he’d been through the Academy, so I realised he’d be well trained, well drilled. It was a case of batting against someone sight unseen. As a batsman in that situation, you just play balls on their merit. But I don’t remember much about that particular innings except he got me out. Glenn went on to be a great bowler and I loved everything about the guy because he had a very simple action, his theory was simple and he received his just rewards.’
McGrath next dismissed Courtney for 20 when Bevan took a good catch at cover. He finished his first eight-over spell with 2 wickets for a miserly 11 runs, impressing one of his fellow Academy cadets, Adam Gilchrist, a hard hitter from the north coast via Sydney’s Gordon club. Gilchrist was also making his debut that day in the first of his ten games for NSW before he transferred to Western Australia, where he’d become arguably the game’s greatest wicketkeeper–batsman.
‘Glenn was somewhat of an unknown to everyone because he hadn’t graduated through the junior ranks, like the NSW under-17s and under-19s,’ Gilchrist says. ‘He had a tremendous first innings, taking five wickets, and in that time he gave an indication of what he would soon become – a bowler who’d terrorise the batsmen with his consistency and patience.’
Tasmania finished a rain-interrupted first day at 6 for 200. Ponting remained unconquered on 98 after being stuck in the so-called ‘nervous nineties’ for 54 painstaking minutes, while the all-rounder Shaun Young was yet to score when the umpire called stumps.
McGrath finished his baptism of fire with an impressive 2 for 55 from 21 overs. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Greg Growden noted: ‘McGrath, 22, has several elements in his favour. He is fast. He has a marvellous bowling action. He’s smooth in all areas of his run-up. He is prepared to attack the stumps. And he does not get sucked into trying to show batsmen how high he can bounce a ball over their heads.
‘The early Tasmanian batsmen seemed surprised by the amount of pace McGrath could extract from the most innocent of actions. His early overs in his first match were his best, first producing the required off-cutter to have Dene Hills caught at slip, before confusing Nick Courtney who tried to flick him through the on-side only to get caught in the covers.
‘McGrath was not as effective when used as a stock bowler, but a damp ball did not help his cause...’
From the hours they had spent together finetuning his technique in the nets, Marsh could picture exactly how McGrath would have approached his state debut – and he insisted that even for a greenhorn, it was a sure-fire formula for success.
‘I know I said it to him – and I’m sure other coaches would have said it to him – if you continue to bowl 80-to 90-milean-hour outswingers over the top of off stump at a good length, you’ll get a few wickets. I think he basically tried to do that. And if it wasn’t swinging, he would still get the ball bouncing over the top of the off stump – whether it be in Australia, India, South Africa or Pakistan, he still tried to do the same thing. The only time Glenn ever bowled badly was when he went away from those plans, when he lost his temper and tried to do different things. Even in the early days, Glenn was smart enough to realise that it’s not rocket science.’
Bev watched the action from the back row of the members’ stand. She was delirious with pride – and sharing her joy was a woman she befriended that day, Dot French. Dot had been a member of the SCG for over 40 years. She would go on to become a great friend of Bev’s and, over the years, they would watch as McGrath imposed his authority on the game. The pair were also treated that day in January with Ponting’s emergence as a future superstar.
A few minutes into the second day of play, at 18 years and 40 days, Ricky Ponting knocked the champion Tasmanian batsman Jack Badcock out of the record books to become the youngest Tasmanian to score a first-class century. Badcock – once described as an ‘infant prodigy’ – played his first game for Tasmania in 1929 at just 15 years old. Ponting also entered the record books that day as the sixth-youngest Australian to make a century at the elite level. That list of baby-faced assassins included the likes of Ian Craig, Archie Jackson, Doug Walters, Clem Hill, Neil Harvey, Greg Chappell, Keith Miller, Arthur Morris and Bobby Simpson. Ponting compiled an accomplished 125 runs before being caught by Small off Holdsworth’s bowling.
While the media hailed Ponting’s success as a positive sign for Australia’s cricket future, his strokeplay didn’t surprise McGrath. He’d had enough duels with Ponting in the indoor nets at Adelaide Oval to realise the extent of his class.
‘One thing I quickly learned about Ricky when we were at the Academy in Adelaide was that he’d murder anything short,’ says McGrath. ‘He was so strong and he’d smash anything just short of a length. He did it to me a few times in that game, but I found I was soon hitting good areas and keeping the ball up there at him.’
While Ponting’s century only enhanced the so-called ‘talented teen’s’ reputation as a star in the making, the Tasmanian was equally impressed by the pace McGrath generated on what was generally regarded as a spin-friendly SCG wicket.
‘I had a fair idea of what to expect from Glenn and he didn’t let me down,’ says Ponting. ‘I’d faced a countless amount of balls from him in Adelaide. Believe me, the indoor nets at the Adelaide Oval are the worst place in the world to bat against tall guys armed with brand-new cricket balls ... and Glenn was quick back then. I remember playing for the Academy team when we toured South Africa. We played at Johannesburg, and when I fielded at second slip I stood 30 metres away from the batsman because McGrath was that fast! The height made it hard. When someone is bowling from Glenn’s height – 1.95 metres – it feels as if the wicket is 18 yards long, not 22, because of how big and tall they are. It’s really hard work. It’s bounce that gets good batsmen out, not pace. Pace rarely gets good batsmen out; pace and swing might, but bounce will bring more batsmen undone any time.’
McGrath measured out his run-up on that second day of the match with captain and wicketkeeper Phil Emery’s demand ringing in his ears – take wickets with the second new ball. He responded by snaring three more scalps: Shaun Young, Michael Farrell and Mark Atkinson. McGrath’s final wicket – Atkinson – ensured his name would appear on the honour board that acknowledges those players who either score a century or take five wickets or more in a first-class innings at the SCG. McGrath finished the match with 5 for 79, and – as was the case in the Toohey’s Cup match four years earlier at Parkes – he walked from the field feeling as if he’d proven he was up to the big league.
‘One thing about my career was that the higher the level I played, the better I performed,’ he says. ‘In grade I did okay in seconds, but I bowled much better in firsts. I just loved competing – and with five wickets in my debut, I walked off the SCG feeling very pleased with myself. The memory that stands out most of all is how much I loved every minute I spent out there. I don’t remember feeling any nerves. I am still not sure if I could believe I was there ... it was amazing and I loved it.’
He also sauntered off the SCG with a new nickname – ‘Pigeon’ – which was to become one of the best known in Australian sport.
‘Our all-rounder Brad McNamara saw a pigeon in the outfield,’ recalls Rixon. ‘It had legs like pipe-cleaners, not dissimilar to Glenn’s. So Brad said, “Look, there’s Glenn McGrath!” And it stuck.’
Unfortunately, the inaugural flight of the Pigeon was a short one. As he ran into bowl midway through his 14th over in Tasmania’s second innings, he experienced so acute a pain it felt as if he’d been shot through the thigh.
‘It felt tight,’ he says, grimacing at the mere memory. ‘I’d thought to myself, “That feels a bit sore,” earlier on, but I thought it was nothing to worry about so I kept bowling. When I lifted my leg up to bowl what was to be my last delivery of the match, it felt strange. I’d torn a thigh muscle – I’d never had a muscle go like that before. It crept up on me and I was well and truly gone. At training before the game my thigh was a little bit sore and I worried at the time it might go on me again. I gambled a bit by not saying anything. I told everyone I felt fine, but it all went wrong in the second innings. I still have a hole in my thigh muscle.’
As McGrath received treatment in the back room Pat Farhart used as his studio, the Tasmanians were condemned by the media for their go-slow tactics in the second innings. The visitors made it clear they were intent on denying the Blues an innings victory and, in the process, bored the pants off the 900 enthusiasts who’d turned out. Courtney took 45 deliveries to get off the mark and the usually flamboyant Danny Buckingham stayed perched on 0 for 31 painstaking minutes.
‘If this is the way Shield captains carry on, the competition’s survival is doubtful,’ said The Sunday Telegraph, blasting captain Rod Tucker’s stonewall tactics.
‘Even though the wicket held no dangers for the batsmen and the bowling was hardly threatening, Tasmania played as if they were facing a ten-pronged West Indian pace attack, where basic survival was imperative,’ added The Sun-Herald.
McGrath would have given anything to return to the fray to liven up proceedings with some pace, but he was prone on a massage table hoping to hell his injury hadn’t hurt his chances of being picked for the state again.
‘I remember lying on a bench while Pat Farhart treated me,’ he says. ‘I was looking up and counting the little squares on the ceiling. I just couldn’t believe it. I’d just taken five wickets and I was on my back injured. Later on, the NSW boys laughed at me – they thought it was hilarious I’d got my chance only to blow it badly. I’m not sure what I thought at the time, but I don’t remember it being negative at all.’
Farhart couldn’t help but feel amazed by how McGrath retained his composure after suffering yet another setback so soon after his side muscle trauma.
‘He handled it with a minimum of fuss,’ he says. ‘It impressed me because he seemed to take it all in his stride. I was to learn over the years that it was exactly how Glenn handled most things in his life – he just got on with it. I remember thinking he handled it a lot better than a lot of other blokes in the same boat.’
However, it’s a sad fact that tall, skinny fast bowlers don’t have a great reputation for cricketing longevity, and while Adam Gilchrist hoped his fellow debutant would recover and build a solid career, he admits to having had some concerns for McGrath’s future.
‘I remember thinking that injury was going to be Glenn’s biggest problem,’ says Gilchrist. ‘He was such a wiry, thin fellow that I actually figured it might not be his destiny to be a fast bowler, given his shape and build.’
Gilchrist was not the first to wonder about McGrath’s physical capability to survive the slog of top-class cricket, but McGrath was set for a different challenge that would test both his spirit and his spark – an on-field confrontation with the Australian Test captain that would make headlines.