McGrath gets back his groove

With their leader restored at the head of the pack, Australia's pacemen have stared down a pitch promising sore backs and nothing more. While the game's frontline spinners twirled potential records in their minds, Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Michael Kasprowicz did well not to baulk at the damage the deck would do to theirs.

Instead McGrath, used in five neat five-over spells, led Australia to a 228-run lead on the first innings and reaffirmed his status at the top of the bowling heap. Until he ran through India's high-quality batting line-up with 4 for 55 there were concerns that, at 34 and stepping back tentatively from ankle surgery, this could be the tour he ended on the scrap heap.

McGrath helped Australia roll over the Indian top order, but they were forced to toil through the lower half, and he added only one wicket to his three on the second day. Forcing Harbhajan Singh to bunt a slow offcutter to Darren Lehmann at cover was nothing to compare with the two daggers he slipped through Aakash Chopra and Rahul Dravid on Thursday, but the method showed another old trick. The rest of the bowlers chipped in with wickets as well, but it was the olden-day work of McGrath, confident and assertive once more, that was the most impressive. He could even start sledging again soon.

Throughout his career McGrath's delivery, actions and haircut had stayed much the same. Like the heavy bowling boots he recently discarded, they were unfashionable but worked. Very well. For this Test, his 98th, he has tried lighter, hi-tech shoes and updated his mop to a style worn last summer by many of his team-mates. In everything but bowling the gangly McGrath has generally been a bit off the pace. In his defence, he missed last season's catwalk.

For almost a year the oohs and aahs came from ankle operations and recovery delays instead of Bay 13 and Yabba's Hill. Missing both home series against Zimbabwe and India, he bowled for New South Wales late in the season like a county trundler. Doubters said he was too old to make it again. For a short time McGrath agreed.

Before returning in Darwin against Sri Lanka he considered quitting, then delayed mortality in his comeback innings with five wickets. Still he was - insultingly, for he has more wickets than any Australian fast bowler - considered only a match-by-match proposition. On arriving in India he was nominated for the tour game and the whispers continued. Was it a bowl-off with Brett Lee? Or an opportunity to lube his joints? Whatever the reason, his head was down while the feet of Gillespie and Kasprowicz were up. The new ball stayed in his hand. Body willing, he will hold it until Nagpur, when he will become Australia's first fast bowler to reach 100 Tests.

By then he might also have created another milestone. If McGrath remains scoreless (as he did in the first innings here) until he strikes off another six victims, he will have 450 wickets - equal to his haul of Test runs. As a hard-practising batsman it would be one record he chooses to ignore.