McGrath walks the talk

Nailing the big guns
When Glenn McGrath underwent a couple of ankle surgeries last year, many critics were prophesising a quick end to his career, or at least to his potency as a strike bowler. As events over the last season have proved, though, he has lost none of his abilities: he still maintains his metronomic accuracy, he still takes wickets by the bucketfuls, and he still retains something more special - the confidence to target the best batsman in the opposition before a series, and the skill to then live up to his promise. Stephen Fleming has been the latest casualty - in the first two Tests of the ongoing series, Fleming has scored 17 runs off McGrath, and has fallen to him three times in four innings for an average of 5.67 per innings. This, after being nailed by McGrath thrice in the earlier series in Australia as well. Fleming's dismissal hasn't just meant an early setback for an already brittle batting side; for a captain proud of his team's occasional brilliance against Australia, his lack of runs has been a huge psychological blow, and one which has almost certainly eaten into the team's confidence levels as well.

Throughout his career, McGrath has made it a habit of nailing the opposition's best player. Jacques Kallis has been one of the few top batsmen to escape, at least in relative terms, McGrath clutches, getting out to him only four times in his last 18 innings, but McGrath has usually been a master at the game of hunting down the opposition's big guns.

In fact, among bowlers with at least 200 Test wickets, McGrath has highest percentage of captains among his victims. His 11.59% puts him marginally ahead of Javagal Srinath in a list which also has the likes of Waqar Younis, Michael Holding and Malcolm Marshall in the top ten.

McGrath has also bowled exceptionally well to left-handers throughout his career - of the nine batsmen he has dismissed the highest number of times, five are left-handers. Thanks to the contribution of the likes of Lara and Jimmy Adams, McGrath is only one short of nailing 150 left-handed victims. Twenty-one wickets separate him and Shane Warne, who is in second place. (Click here for a list of batsmen who have been dismissed maximum number of times by McGrath.)

Younis's revival
Younis Khan is in the midst of a purple patch. For long, he has been dismissed as someone who doesn't have the class to consistently score at the highest level, but in the 2004-05 season, he has scored enough runs to suggest that could be a regular member of the team for a long time.

Younis's run started with his 124 against Sri Lanka at Karachi. He then followed that with four scores of 40 or more in six innings on a tough tour of Australia, and was the only batsman to average more than 40 in the Tests. Before the Bangalore Test, Younis's average for the season was a healthy 46.16, his best since the 2001-02 season. Is this finally a sign that Younis has turned the corner? (Click here for Younis Khan's career summary.)