Talking shop at a gathering of fast-bowling greats

With a casual half-stride, the only kind of run-up of which he remains capable, Andy Roberts zipped a plastic ball off the tarmac with enough speed and accuracy to clatter two of the three plastic stumps behind a 14-year-old still in the process of playing his stylish forward-defensive prod. Big gleaming grins signalled the appreciation of the watching Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose ...

" ... it bloody kills me [McGrath] to say it, but I can't see too many teams getting close to England. They've got a great bowling attack, and in the last [Ashes] series our boys [Australia] just weren't doing the basics well, weren't landing two balls in the same spot. But when you lose seven senior players in a two-year period, that would destroy most teams ... " Looking slightly less far ahead, I asked McGrath whether he was pleased to be going to that evening's dinner. "Yeah, it's great to get the intelligent players together," he said. I told him that I'd attended the batting version in 2008. "That," he said, po-faced, "would have been pretty dull."