McGrath pulls it out of the bag

The Yorkshire batsman certainly gave a big sigh of relief when he learned he had been selected and, although England's chairman of selectors David Graveney had spoken to him briefly when he was at Riverside earlier on, he had given nothing away.

"He just said 'well batted' but made no mention of whether or not I would be in the one-day squad," said McGrath.

"Obviously, I am delighted to be involved again. I knew it was going to be a close call and I just hope that I can get out there and score a few runs this time."

Apart from his run-out horror before he had scored in this week's Roses spectacular, McGrath is in sound form and it would have been tough on him if he had been frozen out after touring Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the West Indies with England last winter and not playing in a single one-day international.

The weather hit each series over there so badly that there were few opportunities for players who were not automatic selections and McGrath had to spend all his time watching the action from the pavilion.

His involvement with England led McGrath to make a difficult decision when he returned home and that was to surrender the Yorkshire captaincy which he had been given at the start of last season.

McGrath had only been in the job for a few weeks when he got a surprise call to the England ranks and for the remainder of the summer he had to concentrate hard on his England batting while at the same time wondering how Yorkshire were getting on without him.

It was an unselfish act by McGrath to give up the captaincy and it would have appeared to be the wrong decision from a personal point of view if England had gone and overlooked him.

"I would probably have seemed a bit foolish but as things have turned out it was exactly the right thing to do," he said.

"Yorkshire are now on a roll in the championship and are also doing very well in one-day games. We are beginning to show some consistency but if I were still captain and having to leave for England then the new guy taking over would have to start all over again."

Although England seem to regard McGrath more as a one-day batsman these days rather than a Test player, his record would indicate that he is even better equipped for the longer form of the game.

Last season in the National League he managed only 112 runs in eight completed innings for an average of 15.25 whereas in a restricted season of championship cricket he scored 649 runs and averaged 43.26.

So far this summer, McGrath in five totesport League appearances had made 157 at an average of 39.25. He has had some satisfactory innings without a really big one, a logical reason for this being that coming in at No 5 lessens his scope with the overs running out.

Even so, over the longer term McGrath has a better one-day record than his England captain and Yorkshire team-mate, Michael Vaughan, who batted so brilliantly in the Roses showdown at Old Trafford to push Yorkshire into the semi-finals of the Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy.

The record book shows that up to the start of this season Vaughan had batted in 155 one-day matches in all competitions for Yorkshire while scoring 3,869 runs at an average of 26.87. McGrath had had 12 fewer innings but had made 3,836 runs at the much better average of 31.19.

Vaughan's unbeaten innings of 116 against Lancashire, however, will long be remembered by all who saw it because it was one of the classic one-day knocks of all time.

McGrath, on the other hand, will not have such affectionate memories of the game. He had faced only one ball when he watched Vaughan play a cut to backward point, called him for a run and could not make his crease before Mark Chilton's throw smacked into the stumps.

Hopefully, McGrath will have got over that disaster by now and he will be itching to show England that he can match Vaughan stroke for stroke.