The last flight?

There's a chance Glenn McGrath was today named in an Australian cricket squad for the last time. If so, if these next five weeks really are the end, there will be no grand farewell jaunt for a man who was built like a pigeon, sledged like a crow, kept a hawk's line and length, had an eagle's eye for an enemy's vulnerabilities and feasted on rotting batting flesh like some sick-at-heart, crooked-beaked vulture. Instead he will make a seagull's meek exit, wailing aimlessly, unheard and unlamented, feeding only off the scraps others leave behind.

If this is the end, then that miracle outfield grab he clutched at Adelaide on November 24, 2002 - when he hovered more like a butterfly than a pigeon, floating full-stretch in mid-air for what felt like minutes - will assume a peculiar resonance in hindsight. For that one leaping instant he did not look like the Glenn McGrath we know, and he hasn't looked like him since. That very same day was the last time he took four wickets in a Test innings. Since then, in six Tests and 1237 deliveries, all he has to show for his grunt and hurt is 14 crummy victims, nearly half of them Bangladeshis. Two more games now against Sri Lanka, two more bored and broken and grouchy and flat-footed efforts, and it might be goodnight.

That would be some kind of ending. There would be none of the drama of Lillee's pre-Test retirement declaration of Sydney '84; none of the over-and-out menace of Charlie "The Terror" Turner's sign-off in 1895. Instead he will go the way of Lindwall in '60 and McKenzie in '71 and Thomson in '85, and of Gregory and McDermott and Big Merv too. Underdone and over the hill, full of huff but short of puff. It is the first thing every fast bowler must dread. It is the last thing we ever expected of McGrath.

Because he made it all look so simple. You jog in - not too brisk, mind, just a gentle trot - and speed up as you hit the crease. Then you plonk the ball down around off stump or thereabouts, maybe wobbling it a whisker this way or that, maybe not. Repeat Step One six times an over, 25 overs a day, and ditto for Step Two apart from the odd delivery jammed in at either the batsman's big toe or ribcage. Then bingo: you've got 430 Test wickets. What can possibly go wrong?

We'll all be Nostradamuses after the event, of course. Stubborn codger should have quit while he was ahead, we'll mutter. Fast bowling's a caper for anklebiters, not old crocks whose ankles are biting. But we won't actually have a clue. How could we? Even Geoff Lawson, a bona fide expert in the trade who reckons McGrath is cocking up his delivery stride, doesn't really know. McGrath himself is probably guessing.

After all, how's a bloke to tell if he's past it or simply rusty? When does being fastidiously accurate, which used to make you deadly and unplayable, suddenly make you deadly dull and predictable? How can you be sure you've lost forever that crucial nanosecond of extra pace, and that you haven't simply got lumbered with a batch of duff Kookaburras? Maybe these questions keep McGrath awake at night, whirring mockingly round his brain. Chances are he'll be watching how the ball comes out against Sri Lanka with as much anticipation as the rest of us.

We can safely say he's worried. Witness his confession last week that he is thinking of winding down, cultivating a raggedy grey beard and slippers, and bowling first-change from hereon in. He might have been foxing us when he said that, just like he's been foxing Brian Lara and Mike Atherton all these years. Except with them his tactic was always to talk the batsman down. Till now, he's never talked himself down.

One theory has it that McGrath's very simplicity will be the key to him ageing gracefully. His strength was his mental game, and 34 is too young to go senile. He was never especially quick, seldom cut or swung it overmuch, so he hasn't got much to lose. He's not going to freak out in a rash of hives one morning, à la Bob Massie, because he can't hoop it about any more. McGrath never could to begin with.

The flip side to this theory is that because he was a straightforward bowler with a finite repertoire he needs to have complete mastery of each of his prongs. Any deterioration in any department and kapow - he's lunchmeat.

Mechanics aside, McGrath has every reason to want to keep bowling and bowling. Apart from anything, what else is he going to do? There's his pig-shooting, sure, but that can't be as much fun as mowing down hapless Pommy batsmen, even if the pigs do put up more of a fight. A media career seems a longshot. He's not the chattiest bloke around - apart from when he's bowling - and his writing makes his batting look lyrical.

Potentially he could be a cracking coach for McGrath, of all the truly great fast men, is a champion who was made, not born. Except what exactly is he going to teach his young bucks: how to land the ball back-of-a-length, just outside off and wait for the batsman to make an error? Class dismissed after five minutes.

So we'd be fools to doubt his appetite, not to mention his nous and heart and pride. All through his adult life he's never been graceful or gifted or explosive or charismatic or even particularly lanky. Still he's been the world's No. 1 fast bowler. For an entire decade he has defied logic. Now all he has to do is defy time.

Win the war and he won't be like Lillee or Donald, Ambrose or Walsh, or any of those other golden oldies who have been mentioned in dispatches. Pushing 40 and into the breeze, Old Man McGrath would be something else again. Like a pterodactyl.