McGrath’s always been written up as a machine. It’s time he was given the credit he’s due – the man is a frikkin TIME machine! McGrath’s interesting relation to time is well documented: his uncanny ability to remember every single one of his now 504 test dismissals; his prohecies and their inevitable fulfillment; the transformation that has been heralded in this blog. All these tell us something about the engagement McGrath has with his times. He is intensely involved. He inhabits his time fully (much the same as he inhabits the Lords’ pitch) and can move freely along the loops that make up the McGrath-space continuum (or, as it is true he makes the space his own as well, Mcgrath is the Lord’s pitch, then we can call it the McGrath-McGrath continuum).

It seems to be that it is upon nearing and reaching landmark figures that McGrath reveals his talents most clearly. In the season of 2000/1 he predicted he would dismiss first Campbell then Lara for his 299 and 300th wkts respectively. He did this, in consecutive balls, and then for his 301st wkt completed a hat trick, dismissing Adams with the next ball – surpassing prohecy. In taking his 500th test wkt McGrath has revealed a different, perhaps more profound, version of his machinic ability to synthesize time. Maybe it was the lateness of the hour and the surreal air cricket takes on when its being transmitted from the other side of the world at 2.00 am, but it seemed to me, just as a routine action repeats & repeats in a dream that is struggling to get its narrative going, that McGrath was taking the same wkt over and over again. He reached 500 and simultaneously reached 501, 502, 503, 504. Maybe that is an exaggeration but at least 3 of these wkts were indiscernible from one another. McGrath had captured a moment of time and was freeing it to play out its scene over and over again. But his boots had changed colour (if dizzy is a stalliongull, Glenn is now a ponypigeon). It couldn’t have been the same moment. It was the same moment but slightly displaced. McGrath, contrary to popular conception is no metronome. His repeating beats are filled with all the vagaries of time travel, the differences reinvigorate the sameness and make the repetiton volatile. Rather than redundancy McGrath gives us incredbile effectivess and movement – he moves us deeply. I am in the lucky situation of having a mobile phone number very similar to Glenn’s, and was privileged to receive, on Friday, a text that read ‘go glen – luv mum’ – It was very cute that his own mum had spelt his name wrong, and all in all a touching tribute to the great pigeon, lord of Lords, lord of time.