Cardiff, July 09: After destroying England on numerous occassions with the cricket ball, Glenn McGrath was again involved in an active role to plot Andrew Strauss’ men downfall, as the legendary pacer has provided some valuable tips of bowling in English conditions to his former teamamtes ahead of the first Test here.
Australian pacer Peter Siddle, who bowled splendidly well and grabbed two wickets at the dying moment of the opening day of the first Test match yesterday to draw the match at parity, revealed that McGrath delivered an hour-long masterclass in bowling in English conditions to the Australian seam attack.
”Hopefully we can get it going here in Cardiff and throughout the series. Troy Cooley got Pigeon (Glenn McGrath) to come and talk to the seamers at Worcester for about an hour or so about fast bowling over here and wishing us luck. It’s always great to listen to someone with that sort of knowledge, and he made a little joke about us not standing on any cricket balls,” Siddle wrote in his Ashes blog for The Wisden Cricketer
website.
The right-arm pacer further disclosed that the visitors have worked hard on reverse swing in the warm-up matches as England used the art succssesfully in 2005 to grab the coveted trophy. ”It’s something that played a big part in 2005 so it’s something that we’ve worked on hard. England used it a lot better than us that time, but we’ve done our planning and our practice and it paid off for Brett (Lee) at Worcester,” writes Siddle.
Siddle said he is also learning how to treat with overseas crowd and is looking forward to getting involved with English crowds. ”I copped a bit in South Africa, but I started to enjoy it and get used to how I’m going to get treated overseas. ”I’ve heard the Welsh crowds like to get a bit rowdy, so I’m looking forward to that, it should be good fun. We haven’t got any stick yet, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes people to have a good yell at us,” he added.
—–Agencies