Would’ve Enjoyed Bowling To Virat Kohli: Glenn McGrath
Jan 22, 2017 at 7:30 PM
The former Australian bowling legend, Glenn McGrath, while speaking at a function ‘discussing cricket’ with N. Ram, the chairman of Kasturi & Sons Ltd at Madra School of Economics, said that he would’ve loved to bowl the Indian batting star Virat Kohli, as he thinks that it would have been a challenge for him to bowl at Kohli, McGrath said
“I would’ve enjoyed the challenge of bowling to Virat. No doubt at all. A couple of guys who I met on the lift today told me “Ah, I bet you’re glad that you aren’t bowling these days.” It is different these days. Batsmen have a different mentality. Especially in the one-dayers and T20s. Making 380 in a one-dayer and only just defending it… I wonder what the bowlers are doing.”
Further, Mcgrath added that Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara were the two stand-out players for him, whom he played against,
“Sachin (Tendulkar) and (Brian) Lara are two of the standouts I’ve played against. Sachin was technically great, mentally strong. Lara was very flamboyant, (he’s) got all the shots in the world, but mentally unstable. Brian and I had a bit of a ‘love-hate’ relationship. I’ve spent quite a bit of a time with Brian in the last few years. We’re good mates now. We get off well. He even says that I was not as bad as what he thought I used to be.”
Sachin has scored few hundreds against us. But he would always wait for a bad delivery. I could sort of tie him down a little bit with good deliveries. Whereas it was difficult to tie Brian down. He would keep hitting boundaries,” the fast bowling legend added.
A member of three-time world cup winning Australian team, has played under number of captains, with Ricky Ponting being the most successful among the all but still, he thinks that Shane Warne, the second highest wicket-taker in the longest format of the game, could have been a great captain and he was the best captain that Australia never had,
“Warnie (Shane Warne) was probably the best captain Australia never had. He did go and captain Hampshire. He really brought a different attitude to that club and they played good, aggressive, positive cricket.
Though he didn’t captain in Tests, he has captained a few ODIs when Steve Waugh was injured. But the thing with Shane was that sometimes he’d over-captain. There was a one-day game at the SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground) where we played England. He was captain, I was bowling. I had taken the ninth wicket. And Alan Mulally walks out. When it comes to batting he makes me look like Sir Donald Bradman. So, we need one more wicket to win, they need four runs. So, Warnie runs all the way to me from first slip and says “Pidge, this guy’s not very good. The ball we need to bowl is a reverse inswinging yorker.” I told him, “What else am I going to bowl?”. So, the match resumes. I bowl a good yorker. Mulally gets nowhere near it. Stumps all over. We win. We are running around, happy with the win. Warnie comes up to me and says: “I told you so.”
Glenn McGrath is currently in India to coach the young Indian pacers in the MRF pace foundation in Chennai. The veteran player was appointed as the director of the foundation in the year 2012 when he succeeded Dennis Lillee for the role of the director of the academy.