It was hard for people to get a grip on why McGrath was so good. He’d put it on a length that batsmen thought they could get forward to and drive, but then it would bounce and get bigger than they expected, so they’d be fending rather than stroking at it. They’d be itching to drive him, but just couldn’t get to the length.

What summed up McGrath was his simplicity. We’d go round and round in circles at team meetings, figuring out tactics against this or that batsman, plotting their downfall in elaborate ways, and Pigeon would just say: ‘Top of off.’

I recalled that passage from Adam Gilchrist’s autobiography True Colors while reading this Abhishek Purohit piece on India’s preparation for the marquee clash against South Africa tomorrow (February 22). A passage caught my eye:
“If you have a partnership going, if you have wickets in hand, and if somebody starts to middle the deliveries, it becomes quite hard to contain the batsmen because of the pace of the wicket and also with that extra fielder inside. A lot of times you feel, okay, where to really bowl so we can contain the batsmen,” Dhoni had said. “Most of the teams are just bowling back of the length and asking the batsmen to clear the boundaries, and irrespective of how good a batsman you are, that’s one strategy that almost all the teams have deployed, and it is working.”

The MCG, where India plays the Proteas, was the venue of the January 14 tie between Australia and England. The former, batting first, ended up with 342/9; 203 of those runs came on the leg side. Aaron Finch, who made 135 off 128 balls (12 fours, three sixes) played the flick-drive off the pads as his bread and butter shot; Glenn Maxwell (66 off 40, 11 fours) pulled more often than he pulled off his signature reverse sweeps. Against that, England’s only batting star was James Taylor 98 not out (90 balls with 11 fours, two sixes) — and his most frequent scoring shot was the classical on-drive.

Those strokes are a message in sign-language, to be read in tandem with the preponderance of on-side runs (Australia scored (203 runs on the on, against 134 on the off) — clearly, (and if you were watching, noticeably), England bowlers bowled in the region from short to back of good length too often. Against that, the home team bowlers opted for the good-to-full length, and it reflected both in Taylor’s driving and in England’s pie-chart: 107 on the off, 108 on the on, very little joy for the pull and the heave.

The MCG even with its drop-in pitch has good bounce and carry; anything on the short side more often than not flies over the stumps and negates the bowled and LBW options with it. To follow the Glenn McGrath principle of top of off is going take the fuller, rather than shorter, lengths — four fielders on the off inside the circle, a fourth stump line with the length good or just back, the fuller yorker or the shorter bouncer used to surprise and keep the batsmen from getting into a groove.

All of that is why I am hoping Dhoni’s words are an exercise in deception, not self-deception — he has previous experience of what happens when he tells his bowlers to keep it short.

The Indian bowlers hold the key to tomorrow’s game. South Africa is not a side the Indian batting line-up can plan on batting big against, whether setting up a target or chasing it; the best hope lies in disciplined bowling to put pressure on the Proteas, who will look to bat India out of the game and will feel constrained if tight lines and tighter fields make the going hard.

Passing thought: I could be wronging the ICC, in which case I apologize — but I just can’t shed the suspicion that the governing body is tweaking the speed gun a little to add to spectator excitement.

In common with most, I sat up straighter when during India’s game against Pakistan the speed gun kept spitting out 150-plus numbers regularly for bowlers on both sides, on one occasion flashing a 156.9kmph high for Umesh Yadav.

Seriously? Yadav was perceptibly quick — but averaging 150-plus and hitting 155-plus more than once? Okay, then, what speed do you reckon Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel are likely to hit?

This post has been reproduced with the permission of the author.