The stray cricket ball that may have cost Australia the 2005 Ashes
On the morning of the second Test at Edgbaston in 2005, Glenn McGrath stepped on a loose cricket ball during warm-ups and wrecked his ankle. England piled up 407 runs on the first day and won by two runs. Both of England's victories that summer came in matches McGrath missed, and they took the Ashes.
That absence showed how much Australia leaned on him. Born on 9 February 1970 in Dubbo and raised in Narromine, New South Wales, McGrath was spotted by the former Test batsman Doug Walters, moved to Sydney for grade cricket and reached the Test side after just eight first-class matches. He debuted against New Zealand at Perth in the 1993 to 1994 season. In the 1995 series win in the Caribbean he bounced even the West Indies tailenders, fast bowlers unused to that treatment, and Ricky Ponting later credited it with signalling that Australia meant business.
His weapon was relentless accuracy rather than raw speed, and it made him both miserly and deadly. Among fast bowlers only James Anderson and Stuart Broad have taken more Test wickets, and no bowler with more wickets has a lower average. At Lord's in 2005 he became the fourth bowler to reach 500 Test wickets. A county season with Worcestershire in 2000 yielded 80 wickets at 13.21, including 8 for 41 against Northamptonshire.
He was part of Australia's run of three straight World Cup wins, in 1999, 2003 and 2007, and holds the tournament's all-time wicket tally of 71. The 2007 edition, his last international event, brought him 26 wickets and the player of the tournament award. His final Test, in Sydney in January 2007, sealed a 5 to 0 Ashes whitewash, and he took a wicket with the last ball he bowled in Tests. He later wrote that he felt no sadness, only a sense that he had been missing too much of his family's life.
Since retiring he has directed the MRF Pace Foundation in Chennai, succeeding Dennis Lillee, and leads the McGrath Foundation, a breast cancer charity he founded with his late first wife, Jane. He entered the ICC Hall of Fame in January 2013.
Source: Glenn McGrath
