9:56am Saturday 20th March 2010
ANTHONY McGRATH believes “keeping it simple”
has been the key to his success in Twenty20 cricket.
The former Yorkshire skipper is one of only two White Rose players to have broken the 1,000 career runs barrier in the shortest form of the game, with Jacques Rudolph being the other.
The 34 year-old batsman amassed 392 runs at an average of 56 from nine matches in 2008, leaving him the second highest run-scorer in the country that season.
“You see all these new shots all over the place, and there are a number of theories around about doing it this way or that way, but I’ve just tried to make sure that I play my own game,” he said.
“I’m not a big sweeper or reverse sweeper, I just try to rotate the strike by getting the ones and twos. I’m a pretty strong guy, and I try to find the boundary when I can.
There is no real secret, it’s just about keeping it simple.”
McGrath returns to the Kensington Oval in Barbados today, where Yorkshire face a University of the West Indies XI in their opening match of the Barbados Cricket Twenty20 Cup. Finals Day is tomorrow.
McGrath, who hit 72 in Yorkshire’s two-day match against Derbyshire on Thursday, said: “There’s a final to play for, and we want to be in it to win it. It will be good preparation for our season.
“There are 16 games in Twenty20 this season, and we won’t have a lot of practice time when we get home.
We’ve got to use the opportunity out here as well as we can.”
North Division rivals Lancashire and Derbyshire are also involved at Kensington this weekend, as are 2008 Twenty20 Cup semi-finalists Essex.
McGrath continued: “I’ve had a good winter. Hopefully I can have a few more good knocks out here and take that into the season proper when we get back home.”
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