Selvey's countersalvo

Cuckoo. The best part of four months still to go to the start of the Ashes series and already Glenn McGrath is talking drivel. Is this the earliest yet? I think a letter to the Times is in order.

McGrath's blatherings - described in some quarters as "traditional", as if they were up there with the Melbourne Cup and Anzac Day - habitually take the form of a series prediction, usually 5-0 to Australia, or the latest players he intends to "target" with the ball. This is intended to be oh so scary, which once, when he was in his pomp, it might have been, but now, coming from a fellow rising 37 who won't have bowled for the best part of a year and when he does will do so at around Paul Collingwood's pace, carries the physical and mental threat of Private Pike. Perhaps he realises that actually England's batsmen will be targeting him and is just getting his retaliation in first.