Fast bowlers are a breed apart, which was best exemplified
by the pacemen from the Caribbean. In the ’50s and ’60s West Indies hounded
batsmen around the world with men like Wes Hall, Roy Gilchrist and Charlie
Griffith. In the late ’70s and the whole of ’80s, the West Indian factory of
pace bowling produced some breath-taking pacemen to send shivers down the
batsmen’s spine with pace, bounce and guile. It was primarily due to the
unrelenting terror struck by the high-quality fast bowlers that West Indies
were such feared force in world cricket.
Clive Lloyd rotated four fast bowlers to ensure that there
was no respite for the batsmen. Such was the quality of these fast bowlers that
the nature of the wicket did not matter in asserting their authority. Though
there was no stopping the West Indies fast bowling production line, but four
men left a lasting mark in the history of the game – Andy Roberts, Michael
Holding, Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall, the nuclear weapons on whose
strength Clive Lloyd maintained the West Indies’ aura of invincibility.
Andy Roberts was first in the line of great modern West
Indian fast bowlers. After the decline of Hall and Griffith, there was a vacuum
which undermined the traditional West Indian strength. Then a fast bowler
emerged from Antigua, unsung and unheard till he started getting wickets in
plenty cracking skulls and messing up faces. Roberts announced his arrival on
the world scene. He was the spearhead of the Caribbean pace attack who was
genuinely quick and could swing or cut the ball either ways. He had two shades
of bouncers – the traditional one and the other where he kept the bowling
fingers across the seam which left the best batsmen guessing.
In his first Test series against the Australians in 1975-76,
Michael Holding wept as many of his appeals were turned down. But Holding came
back from Down Under a wiser man. And in the Test series against England in
1976, he annihilated the Englishmen with the kind of pace that the world had
not seen in a very long time. On a flat track at The Oval, his pace, control
and guile is now part of Test cricket’s folklore. Holding’s run-up was poetry
in motion and his silky run-up was deceptive. Holding earned the sobriquet
“Whispering Death” because of his ability to ‘kill’ batsmen with grace.
Joel Garner, an imposing figure at 6 feet, 8 inch and 17
stone, generated speed and yet was astonishingly accurate. Garner was able to
generate steep bounce from good length by virtue of his great height to make
life miserable for the batsmen. To compound agony, Garner had the most lethal
of yorkers – swinging in with a distinct buzz and threatening to rip apart the
toes. Garner was mostly a stock bowler who came in after Roberts or Holding or
Marshall had done much of the damage.
By the ’80s, Malcolm Marshall had developed into a lethal
weapon and was hailed by many as the greatest fast bowlers in the history of
cricket. He was not the stereotype fast bowler. For a West Indian fast bowler,
he was just five feet ten inches. Again, he was even slender in comparison to
the giants with whom he used to bowl. He generated speed with his rhythm,
balance athleticism rather than strength. His run-up was not that long; it was
sprint from the top of the top of his run-up culminating in a windmill kind of
delivery action that made him astonishingly nippy in the air and off the
wicket.
If Colin Croft wasn’t banned for touring the then apartheid
South Africa, then the story of Malcolm Marshall may possibly not have been
scripted.
These were Lloyd’s main weapon of terror who caused
legalized mayhem around the world.
Note: This article has been posted at Cricket Country on 12/07/2011 Roberts, Holding, Garner & Marshall - Lloyd's weapons that destroyed the world
Thank You
Faisal Caesar
No comments:
Post a Comment