It happened at least once. I know because I saw it. Television coverage was not as widespread then as it is nowadays so I can’t say for sure whether it happened at any other time. But I doubt it did, for it’s unlikely it’d go unnoticed.

The first Test of India’s 1983 visit to the Caribbean at Sabina Park was rain-affected, pedestrian, and seemed headed for a draw. That is until Andy Roberts took the ball after tea on the last day and breathed new life into the game.

The sizeable crowd grew loud as he charged in, peppering the unfortunate batters with deliveries aimed at chest and neck. They roared as each dismissal brought a Test match, dead and almost buried, closer to a stirring, scarcely believable resurrection. The rowdier among them hurled accolades aplenty in his direction as he returned to his fielding position after each successful over, desperately trying to cajole some kind of reaction from such a seemingly unemotional man.

And then it happened. He had resisted for some time, going about his business without paying the throng much attention. But, somehow, they got through to him and he had to offer some type of acknowledgment. It wasn’t the big and warm kind that came easily to some of his other less introverted comrades. You actually had to look closely to see it. But a sliver of a smile came over the normally dour visage of the West Indies fast bowler. Happy to be acknowledged, the crowd roared louder still.

“If you hit me for four,” Roberts explained, “what is there to smile about.” Yet he didn’t smile when he flattened your stumps either. He was just that kind of man: serious, uncompromising, even-keeled.

I’m sure he didn’t obtain any pleasure whenever he hit a batter. But he didn’t seem overly perturbed by it. Fast bowling of the kind he dealt in was a dangerous affair. A hard ball hurled at great pace can do substantial damage if its path is interrupted by soft flesh; we all know that physical jeopardy is part and parcel of the great game.

In the days when former international umpire Mervyn Kitchen played for Somerset County, he and teammate Graham Burgess were in the habit of doing pretend commentary while they waited to bat. On one occasion, reports Vivian Richards in his autobiography, they were in particularly fine form as they described deliveries threatening and often crashing into the upper bodies of their teammates. Playing for Hampshire, Roberts was sending them down like rockets. “Did you see that!” bellowed Kitchen, “it’s the quickest ball I have ever seen in my life. I am not going to get these smashed,” he said as he removed his false teeth and placed them in his pocket, “I paid too much for them.”

The list of batters forced to endure pain at Roberts’s hands is long. Richards goes through a catalogue of batsmen who were hurt from deliveries propelled by his countryman’s right arm: “The first time I saw it was when he hit David Hookes in a World Series cricket match and broke his jaw. The Australian Golden Boy was wired up for weeks and couldn’t eat anything solid for a while. I also saw him hit Peter Toohey in Trinidad and broke his nose, and then later he smashed his thumb in the same game; he broke Sadiq Mohammad’s jaw in a Test match in Georgetown and Majid Khan’s cheekbone in county cricket.”

The tough-as-nails Brian Close was struck a fearful blow under the armpits in 1974 playing for Somorset. Falling “like a stone”, according to Richards, he stopped breathing for a while and had to be resuscitated.

Ian Botham was teenaged and had not become one of England’s greatest all-rounder when he ran into a rampaging Roberts during that same game. The pugnacious but naïve Somerset upstart, ignorant of the Antiguan’s famed two-bouncer trick — one fast, the other much faster — hooked Roberts for six, only to find he was unable to get out of the way of the follow-up bouncer which dislodged a few of his teeth. Botham showed his mettle by guiding his team to victory after spitting out the mixture of blood and enamel on the field, but much of the next day saw him reclined in a dental surgeon’s chair, undergoing extensive repairs. Botham acknowledged that he fell for the ploy “hook, line, and sinker”, and felt fortunate he never had to pay a higher price.

Steven Comacho, unfortunately, did.

The West Indies visited England in 1974 and the bespectacled Guyanese was expected to open the batting in the Tests. Eager to attract the notice of the Caribbean selectors, Roberts bowled as if electrically charged when the visitors tackled Hampshire and delivered a bouncer that opened a nasty wound just below the eye. Surgery was required to correct the concussed batsman’s fractured cheekbone, and Camacho could take no further part in the tour. Roberts became a Test cricketer less than a year later.

At Basingstoke that same year, England batting great Colin Cowdrey suffered what Richards called a “sickening” blow when he became another victim of Roberts’s faster bouncer. With the heavyset batsman dropping to the ground like a felled ox, concerned fielders hovered over him. Roberts, it is reported, hardly batting an eye, stood away from the scene.

Yet despite dispensing regular pain, it would be a grave error to believe the Antiguan assassin dealt only in brutality. He traded in high pace, and, like it or not, intimidation was a useful tool of his profession. The intent is not to maim; it is to urge the batsman towards surrendering his wicket without much of a fight. Roberts highly valued the short, rising delivery, but being as cunning as they come he was as likely to defeat you with skill and smarts as with pace and hostility.

Michael Holding, who had a close-up view of how the brooding pacer operated, regularly testifies to the keen fast bowling intellect that Roberts possessed. It was Roberts’s advice that brought the tall Jamaican his first Test wicket, and Holding sought and benefited from his wise counsel throughout much of his career. Opponents feared the heat, but they also respected his ability to plot and execute their downfall.

Roberts’s career was halted against his wishes in 1983 while on tour in India. Taking 202 wickets from 47 Tests is a very healthy return, especially when it is remembered that for most of his career he operated in unison with three other pacers who also demanded their fair share.

If age forced him to forfeit some pace at the end, he remained the same uncompromising enforcer that he was in the beginning.

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.