Beginning in the 1970s and continuing throughout the 1980s there emerged in the Caribbean a long line of fast bowlers fit to be numbered among the very best the game has seen.

Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Colin Croft, Joel Garner, Malcolm Marshall, Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, and Ian Bishop dominated opposing batters and kept the West Indies at the pinnacle of world cricket for almost two decades. Asking which of them was the best is hardly a useful enquiry. It’s like asking which Beatle was the most talented songwriter or who was the most accomplished swordsman of The Three Musketeers. They operated at such exalted levels that it is almost a fatuous exercise to contemplate who deserves to be first. And yet it is instructive that the name most often uttered in response to that question is Malcolm Marshall.

The Barbadian’s numbers are staggering. His 376 test wickets came at 20.94 each, the cheapest among bowlers with 200 or more test wickets, and of that lot, only Waqar Younis, Dale Steyn, and Kagiso Rabada have better strike rates.

If ever a bowler perfected the art of fast bowling it was Marshall. He thought about it deeply, practised it diligently, and carried it out expertly. To him, fast bowling was an enduring endeavour and he applied his mind and body to its refinement. Holding reports that he found it remarkable that in the early days the Barbadian walked around with weights strapped to his legs in order to increase their strength. His leg-cutter was born when he approached Dennis Lillee after being impressed by a delivery from the Australian legend that landed around leg, yet whistled past off stump.

Standing at just 5’10” tall, a mere runt compared to his giant pace-bowling comrades, his angled, rhythmical sprint to the crease began somewhere in the mid-off area and culminated in a slightly chest-on action that was all focused power and malevolence. His “skiddy” rather than steep bounce created its own problems, and batters had serious difficulty evading his short deliveries.

Andy Lloyd, for example, had his Test match batting career curtailed to just 33 minutes during the first Test of the 1984 visit to England. Struck on the right temple by a screaming Marshall bouncer, Lloyd was out like a light as he fell motionless on the pitch. Hospitalised for several days, he was left with permanent vision impairment, he never played cricket again until 1985 and failed to regain the form that would warrant a Test recall.

During the first One-day International of England’s 1986 tour to the West Indies, played in Jamaica, Mike Gatting lost his wicket when a bouncer from Marshall was redirected on to his stumps via his nose. So vicious was the blow that fragments of bone cartilage was found lodged in the seam of the ball. It was the first game of the series and Gatting never made another appearance until the last Test in Antigua, almost two months later.

Despite first appearing in West Indies colours in 1978, Marshall never commanded a permanent spot until the 1982/83 India visit to the West Indies, and from then until the arrival of Patrick Patterson in 1986 there was probably no international pacer who could consistently better him for pace. Even on the placid surfaces in India in 1983, he was irresistible, claiming 33 wickets at an unbelievable 18.81 runs per wicket.

Holding relates that they (himself and the senior fast bowlers) were well aware that Marshall was quick from the beginning. But it was when he began to master the art of swing bowling during the 1980 England tour that they became convinced that he was a great bowler in the making.

That he became such an adept exponent of swing is no small feat. Swing, it seems, can be unpredictable: like a finicky love interest, fawning all over you one day and just not that into you the next. The challenge for those who would seek to decipher its secrets is to harness and direct this most potent of weapons when it is available, while still demanding careful handling when it is nowhere to be found.

Marshall did this better than most. A broken thumb limited the West Indian spearhead to just six overs in the first innings of the 1984 Leeds Test, yet Marshall, operating at a little over half pace in the second innings, was still able to trap seven wickets for 53 runs. On the 1988 visit he was simply unstoppable. There was hardly a batsman who could lay a bat on him as he bent it this way and that and romped to 35 wickets in the series, including best Test figures of 7/22 at Old Trafford.

Former Hampshire captain and friend of Marshall, Mark Nicholas, recalls that the great pacer used to nominate which delivery would dismiss the batsman. After two inswingers, for example, Marshall would tell his colleagues to watch out for the batter edging the outswinger. And often the batter did. At times he gave the impression, not so much of a fast bowler straining every sinew to defeat the opposing batter, but of a predator toying with its prey.

Another great swing bowler, Wasim Akram, says that it only required two deliveries for Marshall to discover a batter’s weakness, and while that may be overstating it, the point that the skill and guile of the West Indian was almost otherworldly is well taken. He was meticulous in implementing his schemes, and his joy upon the batter’s demise as his plans bore fruit was unbridled. Clive Lloyd, giving his analysis of a Test match after his retirement and referencing a particular dismissal by Marshall, mentioned that the pacer expertly lured the batter into playing further and further away from his body until he offered a catch behind the wicket. I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, despite the fact that I thought I was following the play closely. It was only while watching a recording of the action that Marshall’s plot became apparent. My only consolation was that the batter was also in the dark.

An uncompromising warrior on the field, Marshall was always great company once hostilities ceased, and many would gather to hear him talk about the game he so dearly loved at the bar at day’s end. He was never reluctant to share his vast knowledge of fast bowling with up-and-coming players, and South Africans Shawn Pollock and Lance Klusener are two of many who testify endlessly of how the great bowler helped them improve their game during his sojourn at Natal from 1992-1996.

Marshall played his last Test in England in 1991 and his international playing career ended when he retired after being dropped from the West Indies team during the 1992 World Cup. His departure was acrimonious as he lamented the conflicts that he thought were hampering his beloved side. “Everything seems to be going down the drain,” he said, “there is no respect, no manners.”

Returning to the team as coach in 1996, he found that those attitudes had not improved. Sadly, he was unable to make much headway and often complained that the players would not listen. His tumultuous turn as coach ended in England during the 1999 World Cup when he was diagnosed with colon cancer. It was a foe even he could not defeat, and in November that same year he died in Barbados at the age of 41. The entire cricket community was saddened by his passing and by the loss of such a great fast-bowling mind.

Garfield Robinson is a Jamaican living in the US who writes on cricket for a few Indian and English publications. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or garfield.v.robinson@gmail.com.