As revealed in a recent article on Baggygreen, Dennis Lillee is concerned about the future of Australia’s fast bowling stocks. The big question seems to be “where is the next generation.” Well as you may expect a blog as incisive and as full of revelation as this one does not happen without an abundant team of discreet minions buzzing throughout the cricketing world, infiltrating deep inside tours’ support personnel and into the close circles of cricketers’ friends. One of my little spies has a theory in regard to the next generation of Australian pace bowlers, and without giving anything away in terms of their identity or whereabouts I can safely say that the information they have at hand to base the theory on is reliable to say the least. The theory regards Glenn McGrath and an audaciously brave and shocking experiment that he is already in the early stages of implementing. If the experiment is a success (and my source is confident that it will be – McGrath’s planning and execution has always been one of his foremost attributes) it will see Glenn McGrath disappear from international cricket, in fact he will disappear from any earthly dwelling whatsoever. There will be rumours of a pig hunting incident, something going horribly wrong, a terrible shooting accident. Not so long after these rumours surface a bright young face will emerge out of the ranks of district cricket in Sydney and begin catching the Australian selectors’ collective eye as they scout for that next generation that Lillee fears a thiness within. He will rise quickly through the ranks and within a very short space of time, with barely a handful of state matches beneath his belt, he will be selected to play for Australia. From this point on there will be no looking back. People will keep saying, at least at first, that there’s something about him reminds them of the great Glenn McGrath. He will be unusually consistent with his accuracy. Perhaps he will be quick to mutter when the accuracy strays to the slightest degree. He will be mature beyond his years. In time though his greatness will rise so far above that even of McGrath’s that this speculation will soon be forgotten and he will become a true champion in his own right. Of course what will have happened here is that McGrath will have transformed himself into a completely new cricketer, a new being, he won’t just be reborn but will have done away with the identity of Glenn McGrath altogether (of course vestiges will remain – the new player will undoubtedly cite McGrath as a childhood influence). As McGrath now is able to repeat so accurately with such effective variation delivery after delivery he will succesfully repeat himself – a perfect, complex and deliberate metempsychosis. It has already begun my source says. One only needs to look at what’s happening to his hair. It was the hair (always look closely at the hair) that tipped my denizen of the cricket world off, and inspired further investigation. I can assure my readers that the investigation has been thorough and none of this is lightly transmitted to you the public. Please be careful how you treat this information.

McGrath’s long time bowling companion, Shane Warne of course is in on the act too – his concern with his hair and making himself young again has been much more public. Warney’s certainly in some sort of transitional phase – the hair, the life changes. But it’s nothing as monumental, nothing as deeply involved with the essence of being as McGrath’s experiment. McGrath’s work goes right to the soul of man and extends to the limits of the cosmos. I can’t see Warney being able to let go of his identity and become an entirely other cricketer. I imagine he will have to be simply a reinvented Warne, revitalised, a new man (god forbid a better man). His career beginning all over again from scratch. Watch for his first delivery in the Ashes, it will turn a mile from outside leg and clip the top of the off stump. The bastman will be utterly bewildered in exactly the same way that Mike Gatting was after Warney’s first ever delivery in Ashes tests 12 years ago. This one delivery will create a disturbance in the English psyche that will hinder their ability to play test cricket against Australia for at least the next 12 years. At that point Warne will have exactly doubled his test wkt count & his public scandal count – and he will have just split with his second wife with whom he will have three children. It is a different kind of repetition, a more brutal, more basic one perhaps, less subtle, more stupid – much more Warne-like. Exactly Warne-like. I do expect though, that when he returns from Spain for the Ashes he will speak nothing but Spanish, comprehend no English. That language is for the opposition.