The Fast and the Furious: From the Caribbean

For more than four decades from around the late 1950s, fast bowlers from the West Indies terrorised batsmen throughout the world. They were fast, ruthless and they meant business. And one had to be seriously good to keep them at bay. The West Indies cricket team reached its peak around 1970-1985. They boasted a four pronged pace attack for much of this period, each man capable of running down the opposition line-up all by himself on his day. The presence of some world class batsmen in the side made them the side to beat in world cricket. West Indies won the first two cricket world cups, in 1975 and 1979, under the leadership of Clive Lloyd. He almost led them to a third title in 1983. But an inspired Indian team led by Kapil Dev stopped them 43 runs short of the silverware. The supply of quality fast bowlers started to go down around the late-1990s and by the dawn of the new millennium, it was all but over. The overall performance of the team started to decline and the side that had once ruled the cricketing world was reduced to a mere shadow of itself. Here in this piece we take a look at some of the men, the fast men, who took the West Indies to the pinnacle of the cricketing world.

Roy Gilchrist: Mean and fast. He started it all.

The first genuine quickie from the Caribbean was probably Roy Gilchrist. At 5 feet 8, he wasn’t the tallest but there was no question about his physical strength. He was probably the meanest of all the pacers from the Caribbean. Gilchrist is considered to be one of only four bowlers ever, to have hit the sightscreen after first bounce on the pitch, on the full (the others being Frank Tyson, Charles Kortright and Jeff Thompson). He enjoyed hitting batsmen and didn’t hesitate to slip in the beamer every now and then. He once said about beamers, “I have searched the rule books, and there is not a word in any of them that says a fellow cannot bowl a fast full-toss at a batsman…a batsman has got a bat and they should get the treatment they deserve. Unless he hasn’t got the technique or the courage…” His love for beamers restricted his career to just 13 tests. He was sent home half-way through West Indies’ 1958-59 tour of the subcontinent after a disagreement with captain Gerry Alexander who had asked him to stop bowling beamers but Gilchrist refused to do so. He was the second highest wicket-taker for the West Indies in the series against India and despite that he had to leave before the Pakistan tour. That was the last time Gilchrist represented the West Indies.

Wes Hall (left) and Charlie Griffith: The first great pair from the West Indies that hunted together

The early 1960s saw the rise of one of the most hostile fast bowling pairs to have ever played the game, Charlie Griffith and Wes Hall. Hall was muscular and tall and the very sight of him was good enough to make batsmen tremble in their boots. He picked up 30 wickets in his debut series, a five test series against India in India in 1958-59. Hall had the ability to bowl fast for long spells throughout the day. He bowled the last over in the first tied test against Australia in Brisbane in 1961. The Aussies needed six runs for victory with three wickets in hand. Hall picked up a wicket and there were two run-outs, one off the final delivery that tied the match. He match figures read 9 for 203. In 1959, Hall became the first West Indian to take a test hat-trick against Pakistan. Griffith, on the other hand, was slower than Hall but possessed a deadly faster delivery. He was well known for his dangerous toe-crushing yorker but is mostly remembered for the bouncer that cracked Indian batsman, Nari Contractor’s skull in 1961-62 and ended his test career prematurely. Gilchrist had a great tour of England in 1963, picking up 32 wickets in five tests, the most by a West Indian on the tour, to help his team to a 3-1 victory. He was no-balled a couple of times in his career for throwing and had to re-model his action, following which he was never the same bowler again. Hall and Griffith retired with 15 days of each other and left behind a void that would take some time to fill.

The Fearsome Foursome: (in order of increasing height) Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Colin Croft, Joel Garner

In the early 1970s the West Indies tried hard to find suitable replacements for Hall and Griffith. The best they could get were probably Vanburn Holder and Keith Boyce. A couple of years later Bernard Julien came along. But they didn’t quite have that fire. It was about a year before the first World Cup that a fairly short man, Andy Roberts burst into the scene. He along with Boyce and Julien helped West Indies lift the 1975 World Cup. It was the period between the 1975 and 1979 World Cup that saw the West Indies grow into the most feared bowling attack in the world. It was during this period that Michael Holding, Colin Croft and Joel Garner came onto the scene to form what was called the fearsome foursome along with Roberts. The quartet helped West Indies clinch the 1979 World Cup. Each of the four had a definitive characteristic that made him dangerous in in his own way. Roberts’ accuracy was outstanding and he was probably the first man to use two kinds of bouncers, the faster one and the slower one. He is only one of three West Indians to have taken 12 wickets or more in a test. He achieved the feat against India in Madras in 1974-75, taking 12 for 121.

Michael Holding’s run-up to the bowling crease is one of the longest ever and it was elegance personified. His feet kissed the turf as he swung rhythmically from side to side. He was nicknamed “Whispering Death” by umpires for his quiet approach to the crease. He bowled very fast and used his height to generate extra bounce from the surface. His match figures of 14 for 149 against England in 1976 is the best ever by a West Indian so far. His over to Geoff Boycott at the Kensington Oval in 1981 is considered to be the fastest over ever bowled, though Holding himself doesn’t agree to that. The first five balls increased in pace and the sixth took out Boycott’s off-stump.

Joel Garner and Colin Croft debuted together in both forms of the game. At 6 feet 8, “Big Bird” Garner is among the tallest to have ever stepped onto the cricket field. As batsmen would say, the ball seemed to be delivered from the clouds. He usually preferred to bowl short of length but also possessed the most devastating toe-crushing yorker the game had seen since Griffith. His figures of 5 for 38 against England in 1979 are the best ever in a World Cup final. Garner is the only bowler to average below 20 in ODIs among those who have take at least 100 wickets. Croft’s international career lasted just 5 years. He was an aggressive bowler and used the bouncer to devastating effect. He ran in behind the umpire and delivered the ball from an angle wide of the crease, slanting it into the right hander. His figures of 8 for 29 against Pakistan in 1977 are the best ever in an innings by a West Indian fast bowler. His career came to a premature end when he decided to be part of a rebel tour to apartheid stricken South Africa in 1982.

Malcolm Marshall: The finest of them all

While the quartet of Roberts, Holding, Garner and Croft were terrorising batsmen the world over, there was another man by the name of Malcolm Marshall trying to earn himself a place in the side. He didn’t have a great start to his career, picking up just 34 wickets in his first 12 tests from 1978-1982. He returned to the team after Croft’s departure and he made his presence felt in the five test home series against India in 1983, picking up 21 wickets to end as the second highest wicket taker. He went one better later in the year on the tour to India, leading the list of wicket-takers with 33 wickets. By 1984, he had established himself as one of the finest bowlers in the world. He was just 5 foot 9, but he used that to his advantage, developing a threatening bouncer that skidded off the wicket and hurried onto the batsman, making life difficult for even the best in the business. His control over the swinging ball was quite extraordinary. Marshall’s test bowling average of 20.94 is the best for anyone who has taken 200 or more wickets. He ended his test career with 387 wickets and is still regarded by many as the best fast bowler the world has ever seen.

Garner and Holding retired within a month of each other in 1987. West Indies desperately needed men to support Marshall. A few bowlers were tried out, namely Patrick Patterson, Courtney Walsh, Winston Benjamin and Curtly Ambrose. Among them, Walsh and Ambrose slowly started to emerge as the future of fast bowling in the Caribbean. Ambrose was probably the most lethal pacer of his generation. He was a quiet man but the sight of a man standing 6 foot 7 inches over the ground, running with the ball was not the most pleasant for any batsman. Ambrose was remarkably accurate, and he bowled an impeccable line and length. His height helped him get steep bounce from the pitch and when on song, he was simply unplayable. He possessed a quite outstanding yorker and an equally unpleasant bouncer. Ambrose was a man of dream spells. His spell of 7 wickets for just a solitary run against Australia in Perth in 1993 and his figures of 6 for 24 that bowled England out for just 46 at Port-of-Spain Trinidad in 1994 are part of cricket folklore. Former Indian opener, Navjot Singh Sidhu once said that when he and Sachin Tendulkar were playing against the West Indies at Port-of-Spain in 1997, Tendulkar was feeling uncomfortable to play some balls bowled by Ambrose near his rib cage area and then Tendulkar asked Sidhu to face as many deliveries as he can during that bowling spell from Ambrose. The big man retired in 2000 with 404 test wickets and an average of 20.99, a remarkable feat considering the fact that cricket was slowly turning into a batsmen’s game and the pitches were not as kind for fast bowlers as they had been 10 years ago. Walsh, on the other hand, was a wonderful athlete. Like Ambrose, he too was accurate and economic and when the conditions were favourable, he could swing the ball viciously in either direction. He once picked up 5 wickets in an ODI for just one run against Sri Lanka in 1986. He was a true sportsman, and had high respect for the game. The fact that he is the only fast bowler to have bowled more than 5000 overs in his test career is a testimony to his fitness. Walsh retired in 2001 with 519 test wickets, the first man to cross the 500 wickets barrier.

Curtly Ambrose (left) and Courtney Walsh: The last pair of fast legends from the Caribbean

Walsh and Ambrose often got good support from fellow pacer, Ian Bishop. Bishop too was a wonderfully gifted bowler. But regularinjuries cut down his career to just 43 tests and never allowed him to fulfil the promise he had shown. With the retirement of Walsh, the era of great West Indian fast bowlers ended. The team has been struggling since then to find someone capable of carrying forward the legacy. The likes of Jerome Taylor, Fidel Edwards and more recently Kemar Roach have shown promise but the Taylor and Edwards have struggled due to injuries and Roach unfortunately hasn’t been too consistent. Roach, however, is just 22 and he still has time to realise his potential. But other than him, the team from the Caribbean doesn’t seem to have any genuine fast bowling talent. The fact that most pitches around the world, including the Caribbean, don’t offer much for fast bowlers isn’t too encouraging a sign for youngsters aspiring to becoming fast bowlers. West Indies have been searching for someone who can intimidate the opposition with just his pace and bounce and the search continues.