17
Graham Thorpe, one of English cricket’s shining lights, was up the night before the Lord’s Test, the second of the 1997 Ashes series, doing his last-minute homework and studying the Australian attack. Thorpe had thrashed the Australians around Edgbaston, Birmingham, a fortnight before to score a brilliant 138, which, along with Nasser Hussain’s double-century, put England on course for a nine-wicket victory. The Australians, the world’s best attack, had struggled to find their rhythm – and answers – at Birmingham. When McGrath finished his first Test innings in England with 2 for 107, questions were asked about his ability to handle English conditions. Thorpe, however, thought it ridiculous to write the Aussie bowler off after one bad performance, and he put his head down to work out how he’d play him.
‘I was up the night before thinking,’ says Thorpe. ‘I never over-complicated it but I had a game plan – I was going to be aggressive. Obviously I’d thought about McGrath. We batsmen knew if you tried to take liberties against him you’d come a cropper pretty quickly. But I realised that playing against any Australian attack with the likes of McGrath, Warne, Gillespie and later on down the track Brett Lee, you had to form an aggressive game plan. In the lead-up to a game I could picture McGrath’s action very well. I’d wonder how far the ball would pitch; what shots I’d play. At times, getting in the right frame of mind to play was like getting into a game of chess – you just couldn’t afford to slip up. I found throughout my career the days leading up to a Test were quite a nerve-racking time. It was actually a relief to get out there and to get on with it.’
While Thorpe had basked in the glow of victory at Birmingham, McGrath and the Aussie attack had been summoned by team coach Geoff Marsh to a special practice session the day after the defeat to study the nuances of English conditions. There was a sense of shock in the Australian camp as they tried to come to grips with the crushing loss.
‘We all had an extra session the next day,’ captain Mark Taylor says. ‘We put some witches’ hats down on the pitch. We thought, while we didn’t bat too well (I made over 100 which was good because it made some people stop questioning my form and Warnie scored 50), they made 478. We wondered, why the disparity? They made 478 to our first innings 118. So we looked at the batting and we also looked at the bowling. The bowlers were keen to get out there and to bowl the right length. McGrath then showed everyone what was the right length and away he went.’
McGrath remembers the bowlers being summoned to the ground the following morning, to the centre wicket, where they were told to charge in off their long run.
‘The idea was to find some rhythm and to hit the right mark,’ he says. ‘It is easier to work on things like that than in a Test match and, if I remember correctly, my biggest concern was that I was running in too fast. I slowed it down a little bit and that helped in the next Test at Lord’s, because I ran in with a bit of rhythm on a wicket made for my sort of bowling.’
To win at Lord’s, however, England needed to defy history, because the record books showed that they hadn’t beaten Australia at the home of cricket since 1934. Lord’s is viewed by many Australian players as their home away from home, and Taylor says playing there gave his team a big lift.
‘We knew the next game was at Lord’s and we Australians love playing at Lord’s,’ he says. ‘People like Glenn McGrath love playing at Lord’s because of the tradition and its significance. A kid who comes through club cricket at outback Narromine never thinks about playing at Lord’s, so it is quite special for them to get there and they lift.’
One of McGrath’s concerns about bowling at Lord’s for the first time was that he would be overawed by the tradition and history of the ground. While Thorpe mentally prepared strategies he’d employ against the Australians, McGrath spent his afternoon before the Lord’s Test soaking up the tradition and history of cricket’s most famous ground.
‘I didn’t want to get overawed by the occasion, so I went there the day before and I took the time to really look around and soak up the atmosphere. I did that because once the game started I didn’t want to be distracted by the things that make Lord’s so special.’
When Taylor won the toss and elected to bowl, Thorpe’s hair should have turned white with shock after he’d seen the pitch. The curator had dished up a wicket Thorpe realised was tailor-made for the old enemy’s attack. It was on these occasions that Thorpe, who’d represented England in the national youth soccer team, could have been forgiven for wishing he’d pursued a professional football career.
‘Over the past five years Lord’s was as flat as a board,’ he says. ‘But we turn up to play Australia and the wicket was good. We didn’t need a pitch that offered sideways movement or bounce, but that’s what we got. It was a case of us looking at each other and thinking, “Bloody hell!” We’d tried to produce a pitch with a tinge of green in it! McGrath was one of the last bowlers you’d want to give a tinge of green when he had a Duke ball in his hand. We lost the toss and we eventually started to bat at midday the following day [because of the rain]. By 4 pm we were in serious trouble and struggling.’
While Thorpe and the English team tried to come to grips with the wicket that – thanks to the toss of a coin – they’d been condemned to play on, Steve Waugh sat next to McGrath in a section of the dressing-room Waugh had decreed his ‘lucky’ corner. In the 1989 Ashes campaign, the 24-year-old Waugh had belted an unconquered 152 at Lord’s and returned to Australia hailed as the ‘new Bradman’ after averaging 126 in the six-Test series.
From their lucky window McGrath and Waugh enjoyed an uninterrupted view of cricket’s most revered 22 yards of turf. The former Labor leader Doc Evatt once said that Australians would go to war to defend the hallowed pitch, but on this particular morning the ace bowler and star batsman spoke of how best to turn it into a minefield for England. While Waugh’s name was already on the dressing-room’s famous honour board, thanks to his ton in 1989, the pair joked that it would be great to have both their names painted in gold for their respective efforts in the Test. McGrath noted George Eugene Palmer, a right-arm medium-pace spinner, was the first Australian to make the board, taking 6 for 111 in the inaugural Test played at Lord’s in 1884.
But if there was any obvious magic in Waugh’s lucky corner, initially it was hard for McGrath to find – probably because it was buried deep beneath Waugh’s debris.
‘While I know tradition – and Lord’s is steeped in it – meant a lot to Steve, I have to say his lucky corner at Lord’s was treated no differently to the way he treated his spot in every other dressing-room in the world ... it was a mess,’ McGrath says. ‘Pads, bats, gloves, his helmet, were strewn everywhere. But I felt good. There were only two times during my career when I had a feeling I was going to do something special. One time was Lord’s – something made me believe I was destined to do well at Lord’s that day.
‘I don’t know if you describe it as a feeling or a knowing. I just knew something special was going to happen that day, I had no doubts whatsoever that something really good was set and I didn’t question it at all. I prepared as I always did but in the back of my mind was a feeling I was going to do very well. The only other time I felt it was when I took 8 for 24 against Pakistan in 2004 ... maybe I should have felt it more!’
As Waugh sat next to McGrath, he shook his head in disbelief as the fast bowler annoyed yet another unsuspecting team-mate by smacking a grape into the back of his head or by tapping another on the shoulder and looking away as they turned around.
‘He was a classic pain in the butt,’ says Waugh of the team pest. ‘He could hit someone with a bit of ice or a grape from 20 metres away – it was always an adventure as he found ways to entertain himself. If there was a gold medal for silly things he’d be the Olympic champion, but if he was a kid you’d have told him to go find something else to do.’
And yet, for all of McGrath’s childish antics, Waugh figured his mate was destined to shine at the most revered of all cricket grounds – and it had nothing to do with cosmic forces or the alignment of the planets or the stars. He instead credited Lord’s unusual sloping pitch, which favoured such things as McGrath’s off-cutter.
‘If anyone was made to bowl at Lord’s, it was Glenn McGrath. His length when he got bounce made him awkward to play. England never felt comfortable leaving the ball outside their off stump – they had to play at him and that encouraged edging or, if it darted back, he’d either dismiss them LBW or he’d bowl them out. We were playing at the home of cricket; everyone was on edge and ready to play. If you were going to back a bowler to get a five-for that day at Lord’s, it was McGrath.’
Shane Warne – who’d left psychological scars of his own on English batsmen since his first delivery against the old enemy, hailed as the ‘ball of the century’, dismissed Mike Gatting at Manchester in 1993 – also realised Australia’s pace spearhead was ready to rise to the challenge.
‘When you play at Lord’s you look at guys like Glenn McGrath and see their eyes light up,’ he says. ‘But it’s not easy, because I found when conditions were perfect for you – as they were for Glenn that day – your own expectations, and everyone else’s for that matter, are very high. It’s not easy. While it was a bit overcast, the ball was moving and it was a bit seamy, Glenn still had to get the ball in the right area, he still had to find the edges and people still had to catch the ball. It’s hard.’
When play finally started, McGrath savoured the moment. He was opening the bowling for Australia at Lord’s, one of sport’s sacred venues, like Wimbledon for tennis and St Andrews for golf. As he ran in to deliver the opening ball of the match, he was struck by the silence. He later described it as an ‘eerie calm’, because there were no catcalls, no cheers or chants. Instead there was the type of respectful silence people normally reserve for graveyards or churches.
‘It was so quiet,’ says McGrath. ‘I ran in to a mute tension so different to anywhere else I’d played, because in places like Sydney or Melbourne every step of the opening bowler’s run in for the first delivery is the signal for the crowd to go crazy. Lord’s shocked me because it was so reserved.’
Steve Waugh concurs: ‘The English are respectful of the traditions of places like Lord’s and St Andrews. While St Andrews is not the prettiest course – it isn’t how you’d expect a golf course to look – Lord’s is the same for cricket. It’s meant to be flat, but it has an incredible, outrageous slope. If you were playing park cricket at a place like that you’d ask, “What are we doing here?” It’s ridiculous. But there is something there that makes you gravitate towards it, there’s magnetism, because it has a special feel. You think, “This is the place where cricket started; this is where W. G. Grace played; this is the hallowed turf.” As a cricketer, playing there is almost the Holy Grail. You know where you are playing and it is so very special.’
McGrath’s first game on the hallowed ground unfolded rapidly. He made a quick breakthrough after England had hobbled to 11. Greg Blewett, fielding at short leg, caught opening batsman Mark Butcher after he played a limp shot. Mike Atherton followed one run later after edging a McGrath delivery low to Mark Taylor at first slip. And Alec Stewart rued what he called an ‘error of judgement’ every step of the way back to the dressing-room after he was clean-bowled – he’d let the ball go, only to hear the death rattle of his stumps when the ball came back down Lord’s famous slope.
England was 3 for 13. McGrath had taken 3 wickets for 2 runs in just 13 balls – and the English jubilation that had followed the home team’s triumph at Edgbaston was long forgotten by the time Thorpe walked out to the middle under a blanket of grey rain clouds. Thorpe planned to remain faithful to his aggressive strategy, but he needed to be smart. And this was reinforced when he edged the ball to wicketkeeper Ian Healy. Most of the Australians thought the ’keeper had taken the catch clean, but Thorpe lived to fight on after Healy told umpire David Shepherd the ball had reached him on the half-volley.
Thorpe took time out to compose himself.
‘I remember looking at the pitch and thinking, “I have to sit on this wicket. I’ll get a good ball soon and when I do I’ll have to be aggressive straight away,” ’ says Thorpe. ‘I remember we were 3 for 20 and I was looking for anything short of a length so I could pull it. I decided if McGrath bowled anything short I would take him on; anything on the stumps and I’d leave it. That was it. I had one shot in my head.
‘That’s why I think you needed to have a very positive approach against him. Not reckless, positive. Drop and run – to take your singles – would always get a fast bowler angry, it’d really piss him off. You had to capitalise on anything. You also needed a lot of patience. You had to sit in there and go through it. You knew McGrath would be the bloke who’d get the ball thrown to him after lunch or tea. He’d get it at any crucial session because he could build pressure and take wickets. That is the hallmark of a great bowler: they don’t get too cranky, they know they have to sit in and bowl maidens. And he could do that, and do it quite happily.
‘But as a batsman, you always had to have the belief you could get to him to do something different. If you could take him on, have a go at his shorter ball, that was the one thing that would throw up a challenge to him. If he came back with a few more bouncers, you’d think you’d got under his skin.’
But McGrath had no reason to feel irritated by any of the Englishmen he bowled at that day. He was in control – and like any hunter from the Australian outback worth his salt, he realised patience was a virtue.
‘I didn’t lose my head or get carried away when the wickets started to fall. I just kept chipping away and the wickets came. My ball that dismissed Alec Stewart summed up my match. He let it go, but the ball came back at him from up the slope. Alec said he had seen that happen to other batsmen before, but I felt like I’d won the lottery.’
England finished the first day at 3 for 38, with Hussain on 10 and Thorpe 13. While the batsmen may have tossed and turned that night, McGrath slept soundly – but even he couldn’t have dreamed of what destiny had planned for the following day.
‘We just picked up from where we left off,’ he says. ‘Paul Reiffel made a good breakthrough, dismissing Thorpe for 21 when the total was 47, then I grabbed Crawley and Hussain in succession. Dismissing Hussain was a personal triumph. He was my fifth wicket and it felt incredible – a five-wicket haul at Lord’s, life as a fast bowler couldn’t get any better. It came after another rain break and I was pumped.’
Being dismissed by Reiffel was a cruel blow for Thorpe, because he felt he’d been blind-sided after spending so much time digging in to counter McGrath. ‘I was doing all right against Glenn and then Pistol got me – caught by Blewett at short leg,’ says Thorpe. The first of Reiffel’s two victims, he returned to what he called a ‘shell-shocked’ dressing-room. Thorpe and Hussain had shared a 288-run stand at Edgbaston; at Lord’s, their 34 would be the highest of the England innings. Among the English players there was a hope that someone – anyone – could stop the rot, but in his heart of hearts Thorpe realised this was highly unlikely.
‘It was an odd feeling back in the dressing-room, because there really wasn’t much we could do,’ he says. ‘We were 50 for 5, the top order was gone – we were dealing with the rats and mice in terms of batting talent. But you get a bloke in that kind of form and it’s very difficult. McGrath had the ball on a string that day, he was running up the hill, hitting the ball on the seam – he was pretty much unplayable.’
The only Englander enjoying the sight of McGrath tormenting the home team was Jane Steele. Even though she was sitting among the Lord’s members, well aware that open cheering – or screaming, in her case – would be looked down upon by the battalions of old men in blazers, Jane couldn’t help but let them know it was her man who was tearing the heart out of England’s batting line-up.
‘An attendant told me to keep quiet,’ says Jane, recalling the numerous frowns of disapproval and symphony of ‘tsks’ that condemned her enthusiasm. ‘But I replied, “I don’t care because he’s my boyfriend!” Well, I can tell you I got a few looks because the people sitting around me could tell I was English.’
Jane’s unbridled happiness achieved something not too many other people can lay claim to – she made a Lord’s attendant smile.
Perth’s Bob Massie, who in 1972 had taken 16 wickets at Lord’s against England, didn’t enjoy such luck that day. He turned up to the game with the wrong tickets and, despite his place in the ground’s history, the gatekeepers refused to grant him entry. By the time Massie returned to his hotel and found the right pass, McGrath had finished England off.
The non-playing members of the Australian squad who watched from the balcony of their dressing-room didn’t need to worry about attendants or local sensitivities each time McGrath struck, as Adam Gilchrist recalls: ‘It was my first Lord’s experience and even though I wasn’t playing, what stuck in my mind was the crowd appreciated what it was watching. It was the work of a true master craftsman; a guy who was in total control. I couldn’t believe I was watching a guy rip a total batting line-up quite like the way Glenn was. It was very special.’
Andy Caddick’s dismissal by McGrath resulted in England being rolled – all out – for a humiliating 77. The English tabloids went to town, ridiculing their team’s perceived lack of fight. But not even the sharpest wit could match the cold hard facts of history, because England’s total was:
And Glenn McGrath’s 8 for 38 was the best bowling by an Aussie since Massie had taken his 8 for 84 (on his way to match figures of 16 for 137) in 1972. It was the best innings haul by an Australian bowler since 1909, when Frank Laver from Victoria snared 8 for 31 at Old Trafford. And it was ranked the third-best effort by an Australian bowler after Laver’s 1909 effort and Arthur Mailey’s 9 for 121 against England at the MCG in 1920/21.
An ecstatic Geoff Marsh beat the ground’s official sign-writer to the job of adding McGrath’s name to the honour board seconds after Caddick was sent packing, by scribbling G. D. McGrath 8/38 on a piece of paper and taping it to the wooden board.
At the end of the Test, which finished in a draw because of the rain, Steve Waugh couldn’t help but smile wryly when he looked at the board.
‘We both said we wanted our names on the board by the end of the Test. But as it turned out, I was dismissed for a first-ball duck and Pigeon took 8 for 38,’ says Waugh. ‘It was an outstanding effort.’
Among the many faxes of congratulations from the likes of Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard and the Narromine Council, the one that brought the biggest smile to McGrath’s face came from his old Backwater skipper, Shane Horsburgh. He’d become a police officer and was based in rural New South Wales. Despite McGrath’s sensational effort, Horsburgh didn’t doubt his reasons for not giving him the ball when he was in the under-16s: ‘I still didn’t think you could bowl back then!’
As McGrath offered his old skipper from Backwater a silent toast of ‘Good on ya, mate’, England’s media raked over the coals of their team’s first innings disaster.
‘England should stop playing at Lord’s!’ wrote the Sunday Mirror’s Steve Whiting. ‘They haven’t beaten Australia there since 1934 and they won’t this time either.’
Although the game ended in a draw, England finished the psychological battle battered and bruised. After Lord’s, Mark Taylor’s men went on to retain the Ashes – and the skipper points to McGrath’s magic day at the home of cricket as a major reason for the eventual series victory.
‘With Glenn McGrath’s bowling and Matt Elliott’s hundred at Lord’s straight after our loss at Edgbaston, we believed we were a good cricket side,’ he says. ‘We went on with it from there.’