Cheer for a Champion Australia

Paul Johnson pays tribute to a true-blue Aussie who helped on many occasions sway the game and was involved during Australia’s awesome reign of Cricketing success.

With the retirement of Glenn McGrath an era of Australian cricket ends. No more will the men who helped catapult the national team to International Dominance be around to help sway a game.

Taylor, Waugh, Martyn, Warne and McGrath will have fully given way to the new breed, Ponting, Clarke, Symonds, Lee and Tait. And while the side looks like it will continue to dominate world cricket, the air of dominance may slip slightly.

McGrath in tandem with his partner in crime Shane Warne produced such good form for Australia on so many occasions that they made the Aussies unbeatable. While everyone lauds the exciting and dominant batsmen of the Australian team, it has for so many years been the bowlers who have been the backbone of the team, and it is McGrath who held it all together.

With his steepling bounce and miserly line and length, McGrath for the better part of a decade has been the scourge of batsmen around the world not just beating them with brilliance but frustrating them into throwing their wicket away.

Shane Warne, though brilliant would have never got as many wickets as he did if McGrath were not tying the batsmen down at the other end.

At the age of 37 McGrath is set to play his last ever international fixture in tonight’s World Cup Final against Sri Lanka. It has been a World Cup in which the veteran seamer has dominated.

His figures prove it. Adding to his previous record of the best bowling figures at a World Cup when he took 7 for 15 against Namibia, McGrath has now taken an improbable 25 wickets in this World Cup, giving him the record for most wickets at a single World Cup, and he still has a chance to build on that tonight.

What will give him a boost, is knowing that he and his cohorts, Shaun Tait, Nathan Bracken, Shane Watson and Brad Hogg, have bowled out every team they have played with the exception of Bangladesh who they only bowled at for just over 20 overs.

Ironically enough the man who held the record, Chaminda Vaas is playing for the opposition and he is the Sri Lankan equivalent of McGrath, tying the batsmen down for his spin wizard Muralitharan to do the damage at the other end.

This World Cup has seen McGrath stare the doubters in the face, they said he was too old and past it, but he used the steely determination that he has built up over the years to prove them wrong.

McGrath stepped up to fill the gap left by an injured Brett Lee and filled it well, perhaps better than Lee himself could have.

Whether Australia win or lose tonight, McGrath will retire a champion, but to retire a World Champion would be appropriate, so Australia stay up and watch a legend go around for the last time.

Cheer for him as he balls his last ball. Cheer even louder if he walks out to make an improbable last stand with the bat, and remember that Glenn Donald McGrath is one of the greats of cricket, and that Australia will be a lesser team without him.

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