The greatest fast bowler I’ve seen

While going through Shane Warne’s list of the greatest players of all time, I got reminded of one of my childhood icons. When I had just started watching cricket, my fervent devotion to the Indian team ensured I did not have too many icons outside of it. Those who did well against us, or destroyed our mediocre team (I didn’t believe it then) had no chance.

It changed during the 1996 World Cup. India were playing the West Indies at Gwalior. It was a crucial group game and the Windies had been skittled out for a paltry 173. Sachin Tendulkar was beginning to assert the genuinity of his claim to being the world’s best. In my nine year old head, I expected the match to be a stroll in the park.

What I hadn’t reckoned with was a near seven-foot guy by the name of Curtly Ambrose. Within five overs, India were 15/2. Jadeja and Sidhu had been bowled, and their eyes showed they hadn’t a clue. Those two wicket-taking deliveries were the most terrifying snorters I’d ever seen on a cricket pitch, and they smashed the stumps with an almost brutal disgust.

India eventually won the game, but I’d become an Ambrose convert. I remember watching West Indies games as a kid, only to wait for him to bowl. Becoming an Ambrose fan also marked my first break from all-consuming fandom, it was also when I began to love the game as a contest. Where there would be hate for the opposition, there began to be respect and admiration, or sometimes just the acceptance of the inferiority of my own team. Ambrose made me look beyond patriotism.

I sometimes even celebrated when Ambrose took wickets against the Indian team, such was the extent of my admiration. He bowled alongside Courtney Walsh for most of his years, and I always believed he was the superior one. Statistics may put Walsh ahead, but then statistics never tell the truth anyway.

He never played 100 Test matches, falling short by two. But for me, he’s the greatest fast bowler I’ve seen playing, and I loved it as he scared the shit out of the terrified batsmen.

Postscript – Shane Warne’s list is a pretty controversial one. He puts Steve Waugh at number 26, calling him ‘a match-saver than a match-winner.’ There are some other eyebrow-raising judgements, but I think he’s spot-on when he compares McGrath and Ambrose.

‘It was very difficult to split Curtly and Glenn McGrath, but I think Curtly had that extra half-gear as well as being just as accurate and clinical. He could take your head off if he wanted, and he did have that nasty streak. I don’t remember him ever giving me a half-volley – or anybody else for that matter. He turned a game – and the series – in Perth in 1992-93 with a spell of seven wickets for one run.’

Sachin Tendulkar as many expected is number one, Warne calls him quite simply ‘a great player and a great man.’
At number two is Brian Lara, about him he says – At times I felt as though we could bowl 100mph or spin it 14 feet and he still would not get out.