McGrath says he could not anticipate Lara

Former Australian fast bowler Glen McGrath says that sledging former West Indies batsman Brian Lara could produce vastly different results, depending on the batsman’s frame of mind. McGrath dismissed Lara 15 times in Test cricket, though Lara managed to win several of their battles, notably during his match-winning knocks of 213 and 153 not out in the Caribbean in 1999.

Discussing his infamous habit of verbally attacking batsmen, the Aussie remembered that he never knew what to expect with Lara.

“Some batsmen, if you have a bit of chat to them, they went to water. Someone like Lara, if you had a chat to him one day, you’d get him out because he’d go to water. Next day, if you have a chat to him, that’s it, you are never going to get him out. So it worked against some batsmen, for some it didn’t.”

McGrath, who took 563 wickets in 124 Tests, added that he never intended for his remarks to be taken personally.

“It is not something where you went out and said, ‘We’re going to target this guy. We are going to sledge him.’ For me, I probably sledged myself a lot more than I sledged the batsman, because I had such high expectations of myself. And half the time if I said something to the batsmen it was probably more out of frustration that I didn’t achieve what I wanted to with that particular delivery.”

Often ranked alongside West Indian Curtly Ambrose as a master of accurate seam bowling, McGrath said he had always felt flattered by the comparison.

“Curtly just did it so easy. He was so loose: just come up and hit the deck and he could really get bounce and seam. He was one of the bowlers I admired from among those I played against. Curtly had two or three gears where he could crank it up. He was always pretty relaxed but if you got under his skin or fired him up, all of a sudden he could bowl another 5 to 10kph quicker and then he was a real handful.

Probably a good example is our results of bowling to Michael Atherton. I got Athers out 19 times in Tests and Amby got him 17 times. So the fact that we were similar bowlers was unfortunate for Athers. Probably a style of bowling he did not enjoy the most.”