by Tanya Aldred
3rd Test, Trent Bridge
Thursday, August 2, 2001

Why would a boy who grew up hunting pigs in the Australian outback develop a taste for fast bowling? Where did he find the ability to destroy batting line-ups in a single bound? How did he become one of the greatest fast bowlers there has ever been?

There is no reason to Glenn McGrath - though plenty of rhythm. He is a man who lives to bowl, bowls to dream. An automated bowling machine with a fiery malfunction. Someone who thrives on pin-point accuracy - in another life he would have sat happily in the back of a shop, engraving vases day after day, night after night.

It just so happens that his job is not making things but breaking them. What he does best is destroy England - relentlessly and, despite his English wife and season with Worcestershire, with great enjoyment. His five-wicket haul today was his fifth in Ashes cricket, his second of the series, and quite spiteful enough to hammer the final nail into a few careers.

Bang went Atherton, second ball. Off the arm-guard, as we soon discovered, but perhaps umpire Hampshire was just hastening the inevitable - Atherton now averages just 12.69 against McGrath. Four more top-order wickets - Butcher, Ward, White and Stewart - followed. There was only one blemish, a dropped catch off Brett Lee at mid-on. It wasn't typical. McGrath has grown into a safe fielder too - good enough to have been named this month by Bob Simpson and Geoff Lawson in their best Ashes fielding XIs.

To the English he is a snarling villain, but to the Aussies a softy - when he is tickled, watch him smile. And he is no selfish senior pro. After an eight-over, three-wicket spell this afternoon he walked up to Brett Lee, rearranged his bowling mark and snorted encouragement in an ear. Then he was the first to applaud when Lee beat Caddick again, and again, and again.

McGrath bowls as if he is on a production line - dragged by invisible pullies from his mark, to the stumps, and back again. The ball is returned to him by a willing minion, and he catches it like a jedi, knowing, just knowing when, where and how it will arrive in his hand.

For a jedi, he is strangely invisible. Someone once said he was one of the most unremarkable remarkable fast bowlers there had ever been. But who needs to be remarkable when you're unstoppable?

Tanya Aldred is Wisden Online's assistant editor

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd