Australian pace legend Glenn McGrath has expressed that he is utterly disappointed with the quality of pace bowling in the ongoing cricket World Cup and feels that Australia’s Mitchell Starc and Sri Lanka’s Lasith Malinga are the only two pacers who have impressed him.
McGrath said:
“Apart from Malinga and Mitchell Starc I haven’t seen many bowlers trying to bowl good yorkers and that comes back to them not putting the time in the nets.”
McGrath, who took 381 ODI wickets in 250 matches, said that the yorker is the key weapon to limit the scoring at the death overs and the pacers of the respective quarter-finalist teams should step up and work on their skill level if they are to help their team clinch the coveted title.
“If you can deliver six perfect yorkers, they are still hard to play. It cuts down the scoring options. Maybe guys like AB de Villiers and Steven Smith can still find ways, but it’s tougher.
“I don’t see any bowlers apart from Malinga and Starc – who really do it. They come in and try one and they get it wrong because they haven’t really worked on it.
“So they go back to bowling a short ball, a slower ball, just mixing it up – and that’s fine but it opens up the whole field to score and when you’ve got less fieldsmen on the boundary it’s tougher to defend,” he said.
“I think bowlers really have to take responsibility and work on their skill level to be able to match the changes.”
“At the end of the day the only thing the bowler can do is deliver the ball where he wants. If he can do that he’s still going to be effective,” McGrath concluded.