graft away

"For the last 10 years I've been grafting away in my career.

Kallicharran took nearly two and a half hours over 34, while Fredericks was grafting away at the other end.

"Credit to our players for grafting away but later on perhaps tiredness made them look a little disjointed."

The success of the sport derives from the escapism it provides for hard-working every day folk, who have spent their week grafting away in jobs they hate, counting the minutes until their team kicks off again.

Barrington had been ordered by Close to take no chances, but E.W. Swanton wrote "as Barrington grafted away, an automatic slow-motion accumulator...the personification of the modern coldly efficient hyper-professional performance".

With youth unemployment at 43.5%, Greeks these days must feel lucky to hold on to a job at all; but the news that they've been grafting away, helps to explain why the Greek general public don't feel they should be blamed for causing the crisis.

At the beginning of the day I thought a 50-run lead for India was about par for the course and with Rahul Dravid grafting away at one end and Yuvraj trying to hit anything he could it looked as if they were going to get a match-winning lead.