KEY POINTS:
It is invariably fascinating to hear a professional sportsman contemplate retirement.
Glenn McGrath, the great Australian fast bowler who will be 37 next March, knows the end is nearer than the beginning but is not yet ready to go. Former cricketers, most of whom did not go on anywhere near as long, are queuing up to state the obvious.
His riposte to their suggestions was emphatic. Eleven months after playing his previous test he returned by taking 6 for 50 in 23.1 overs, including both of England's openers. It was a barnstorming exhibition.
The selectors had given him a gentle nudge by picking two young, fast bowlers in their squad for the opening test. "It just means those guys are playing well and are being picked on performance first and foremost," said McGrath on the eve of the match as he contemplated the rest of his career.
"I don't look at myself as too old. But it's also the way we train and prepare, technology. Who knows, in 10 or 15 years guys could be playing at 45 or 46, and 36 will be just a young age."
In 10 years' time McGrath will be 46, so he may have had in mind a certain fast bowler from Narromine, New South Wales.
There seems to be an element of self-denial in his intentions. And McGrath has been so good for so long that it would somehow be unfair if he went on too long. Sir Richard Hadlee went on until he was 39, but that was merely the exception proving the rule.
The speculation surrounding McGrath has been heightened by the illness of his wife, Jane, who was diagnosed earlier this year with a return of the cancer from which it was thought she had recovered, and appears to have done so again. If anything, this has determined McGrath to continue.
"Coming into 2006 didn't matter," he said. "I wasn't looking any further forward than getting home and doing what we had to do. Cricket was on the back burner. It's fine at home. If I had any doubts about Jane I wouldn't be here now.
"I wasn't ready to give the game away and I don't think Jane's ready for it either ... She still enjoys it, the kids still enjoy it. At the end of the day this is what I do."
Others are casting doubts. Geoff Lawson, another fast bowler whose international career finished at the more conventional age of 32, said the whole country was now on McGrath watch. This clearly rankled.
"I know what I have to focus on," McGrath said. "He also said that the only reason we play on is for money, and to me that means he doesn't know anything about why we're playing the game. I love the game of cricket, and when I walk away from it I don't want to have any regrets, thinking could I have taken more wickets. "
McGrath was also rattled by the implication that he needed to be spared work when the selectors initially picked a fifth bowler, Shane Watson, in the original team for Brisbane. "If they are doing that because of the age we are, I think it's ridiculous."
His immediate objective is to take 1000 international wickets. That may mean he has to keep going for up to two more years.
He claims to be fitter than he has ever been, and if the face is more rugged and not quite as lean, the enthusiasm for the game is apparent. Still, McGrath is the latest embodiment of whether a player is his own best judge of when to go. Probably not.
During the last Ashes series in Australia, the focus of attention was on Steve Waugh, who famously answered his army of doubters with an epic, Bradman-equalling 29th century in Sydney.
McGrath is on course to do something similar by becoming the first fast bowler to 600 test wickets. He now needs another 52, and the way he went about his work at the Gabba suggests that he will be there some time next year. He was on the button at about 78mph from ball one.
"I have thought a bit about how to go. The team come before the individual, and if I'm affecting the team performance I should not be there." Whenever he goes, nobody would doubt his right to be the monarch of all the Glenns.
- INDEPENDENT
