Anthony McGrath ended his four-match long Test career with a mightily impressive set of statistics.
After four Tests, all played during the 2003 home summer, McGrath averaged over 40 with the bat and exactly 14 with the ball. On the Yorkshire Cricket: Covers Off podcast, the Essex coach explained how he ended up donning the gloves for England during what turned out to be his final Test appearance, against South Africa at Lord’s.
With the designated wicketkeeper Alec Stewart off the field with a migraine and normal deputy keeper Marcus Trescothick nursing a sore finger, McGrath, who had figures of 1-40 up until that point in the innings, was called upon to don the gloves.
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“I got proper stitched up there, proper stitched up. Tres should have done it, but he’d done his finger and Tres was a good keeper and it was one of my first games,” McGrath said. “Well I’d kept a couple of times [before for Yorkshire] but when I missed second ball – I put my hands up and it went straight through my hands – Goughie [Darren Gough] were bowling and you can imagine what he said. It whistled to the boundary for four, it was zigzagging past wickets.
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“Then every fielder started throwing it in so I had to catch it and it were like cymbals. Then to top it off, Ashley Giles, they were on about 500 – that was when [Graeme] Smith and [Gary] Kirsten got loads of runs, Gilo is bowling over the wicket into the rough and I’m standing up and they’re going through my legs and all sorts.
“I think I’d done about 20-odd byes in an hour. Stewie had gone off with a migraine or something and I was expecting coming in at lunch or tea whenever it was, ‘Great effort Mags, thanks for standing in’ and he was like, ‘What was that? I’m going to need them byes taken off my record.’ Goughie’s saying, ‘You can’t send him out again.’ That was my last game by the way. I got more byes than runs in that game.”
