Cricket

After 14 years spearheading the national team, it will take Glenn McGrath more than a three-day journey home to get used to retirement.

Fresh off the plane and almost blinking in the Sydney sunshine, McGrath yesterday contemplated the first day of life as an exinternational. It will, he admitted, take a while to get his head around the change.

McGrath finished the World Cup with an almost obscene quantity of statistics backing his entry

into the game's highest annals.

But yesterday it was, as always, all about the team, even one of which he is now officially no longer part.

"No, it's not really sunk in yet," he said at the SCG, contemplating his retirement. "I don't feel any differently now but maybe next time the guys play or head off on a tour.

"Maybe if I spend a bit of time at home and think about it, but at the moment it feels like just another day."

McGrath had been promised the final over of his final match by his captain Ricky Ponting, only for the farce of bad light and incompetent umpires to conspire against

the dream send-off. But there was plenty else in the tournament to leave Pigeon a happy man.

"I think I had the fairytale finish with being awarded player of the series, that was pretty special," he said. "But it's more about the team than the individual. It's the way we played in the whole tournament, dominant from start to finish.

"At the World Cup we played exactly as we wanted our game plans and execution were second to none.

"A big word used in the tournament was freedom all our batsmen and bowlers played with freedom out in the middle. Ten teams we bowled out from the 13 matches

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and (only) eight of our batsmen had averages.

"So to go through a whole tournament where you haven't used numbers nine, 10 and 11 batsmen is a pretty awesome effort."

With such a core of experience leaving the team, the intellectual property that McGrath carries from 944 international wickets is a prize asset for those who aspire to take his place. Having been there and done it on innumerable occasions, McGrath pledged that wisdom would not be lost.

"I'll still talk to the guys all the time," he said. "The first thing I'll do is get away from the game myself, sit back for maybe six to 12 months and see what the options are, get my thoughts together so I'm a bit clearer about what I want to pass on."

Departing the scene with more records than HMV "That's why I retired," he smiled McGrath insisted that the Generation Next of quicks was ready and waiting to continue Australia's dominance.

"It's in very good hands the fast bowling cupboard's fuller than it's ever been," he said. "You've got Brett Lee, who hopefully will come back strongly from his injury. Nathan Bracken, Stuart Clark there's plenty of guys.

"You've got the young fella here beside me (Mitchell Johnson), he can control it, good swing, pace, bounce, and he's a left armer so every avenue is covered.

"The philosophy's pretty simple hit the deck, top of off (stump). If you can bowl 99 out of 100 balls where you want to then that's what it's about."