Courtney Walsh, Curtley Ambrose, Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner, Michael Holding, Andy Roberts. Here, in order of Test wickets taken, are the West Indies’ most successful fast bowlers. Cricket has perhaps never produced such outstanding athletes as the men on this list, and the nicknames and mythology alone testify to the awe and fear they instilled in batters: “The Whispering Death,” “The Hitman,” “Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” “Fire in Babylon.” But this list of names is incomplete. Add to that Kemar Roach, who bowled West Indies to victory on Sunday to take his 300th Test wicket, a peak that even some of the region’s most revered bowlers have not scaled. In terms of wickets, Roach is second only to Walsh, Ambrose and Marshall. But where Walsh and Ambrose faced each other, and Marshall led some of the most elite attacks ever mounted on a cricket field, Roach often walked alone.
For much of his career, Roach felt like an echo of something that used to be monumental. A fiercely blazing ember of a once roaring fire. A late supernova in the fading Test galaxy. His huge, hoop-jumping right-arm shots, which usually come around the corner and swerve late as if urgently diving into a gravity well, have uprooted many a stump and are his most notable contribution to the genre of great West Indian fast bowling. But there was so much more – deliveries that could go either way, a vicious bouncer with which he battered some of the greatest batters of all time, like Jacques Kallis and Ricky Ponting, early in his career. A little later, he became a master of the wobble seam, the Sri Lankan batters struggling desperately against him off the field in the last Test.
The short ball is not as brutal as it used to be, perhaps Roach has slowed down the pace as the years and repeated shoulder injuries have worn on him. And yet its performance over the past five years is better than it was before. Even in the best years of West Indies fast bowling, terror was never their only currency, skill, patience and bowling IQ were as important as speed and bounce. Although his name is rarely mentioned alongside theirs, Roach is far from out of place among the Caribbean’s greatest players. His average of 26.83 is in the same ballpark as Walsh (24.44) and Roberts (25.61), but his strike rate of 51.81 is better than both and even beats Ambrose’s (54.57).
If there is a crutch it is his dominance at home: 202 wickets in the Caribbean at an average of 22.04 compared to an average of 36.71 away. However, his wickets have hardly been cheap, with more than half of them being top-four knocks (this is also a testament to the kind of swing he generates with the new ball). Then another question arises: where would Roach’s numbers be if he had teammates of the quality with whom the greats of the 80s and 90s built their records? Batters who played in that era speak of a relentlessness in the West Indies’ attacking threat and there were displays of that in the last Test – Roach, Alzarri Joseph, Shamar Joseph and Jayden Seals brought Sri Lanka’s top order together. But for many of his 89 Tests, Roache was the West Indies’ main threat. When opposition players faced the West Indies, they tended to plan mainly for him.
There were 300 wickets taken in a 17-year career, but Roach’s cricket never felt draining. He may be less likely to get bogged down in words now than he used to be, but the intensity is the same as always, the looks on batters who have played and missed are still stern, the thick gold chain still bounces on his chest as he bursts into a game, his skill set now so broad and varied that even on his worst days he has a range of plans he can execute. His pace has slowed, but Roach remains a formidable figure at 38.
West Indies are, of course, still producing quality quicks, but whether there will be another 300-wicket bowler from this region will be in serious doubt. This is primarily due to the economics of Test cricket: India, England and Australia continue to show interest in the longest format, while in places like the West Indies Test cricket is increasingly becoming a backwater. Only a small number of people gathered at the North Sound ground to witness West Indies’ victory over Sri Lanka, even on the weekend.
Roach’s 300th wicket – a heat-seeking missile that crashed into Asita Fernando’s off stump – brought a standing ovation from the Antigua Stadium, but the stand was barely packed. He is the first West Indian bowler to achieve this feat in almost 30 years – Ambrose got there as recently as 1997. Such Test bowling heroics would have lifted tens of thousands of people to their feet in another life. Never ever. At an administrative level, Test Cricket has no serious plan to combat this reduction in its reach – Cricket West Indies’ own administrators have openly talked about changing direction, but without much success.
If Test cricket goes bust here, we should cherish what Roach gave even more. It has taken its place in the best halls of the Caribbean. It was in his career that we heard the clearest echo of the incomparable boom years of the West Indies.