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PACE IS PACE
County Cricket and the enduring appeal of raw pace
Rob Johnston
Michael Holding, doing what he does best, for Lancashire © Getty
It is an iconic picture. Four brooding West Indian fast bowlers standing in a line, one behind the other with the shortest at the front and the tallest at the back, looking menacingly in to the camera. It was taken in 1979 during a time in world cricket when pace was king, a golden age of genuinely quick fast bowlers, the sheer number and quality of which had not been seen before and has not been seen since. Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Colin Croft and Joel Garner, a feared foursome who would be the main reasons the West Indies beat Australia for the first time in 1979-80.
Many will recall the exploits of the great West Indian fast bowlers during the 70s and 80s - and there were seemingly dozens of bowlers from the Caribbean who could reach frightening speeds - but there were plenty of others around the world capable of reaching and exceeding 90mph. Australia had Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thompson, England had Jon Snow and Bob Willis, New Zealand had Richard Hadlee, South Africa had Clive Rice and Garth le Roux, Pakistan had Imran Khan. We could go on.
There were some iconic Test series as the West Indies dominated the international scene and the rest of the world either went in to self-preservation mode or tried to play them at their own game. In 1976, so battered and bruised were India that their captain, Bishan Bedi, refused to send out the final two batsmen in a Kingston Test, handing a ten wicket win to the home side. That 1979-80 series in Australia, which the West Indies won 2-0, showcased the sheer, thrilling brutality of the pace on each side as Lillee and Thomson went toe to toe with Holding and Garner.
The humiliating tour of Australia in 1975, which the West Indies lost 5-1, was the catalyst for the pace race. Lillie and Thomson ran riot and pulverised the West Indian batsmen on route to 56 wickets between them. Added to the aggression they were having to face on the pitch, the West Indies experienced racism on a regular basis throughout the tour. Captain Clive Lloyd vowed it would never happen again and went on the look-out for bowlers who could decimate as much as the Australian's had. As Viv Richard's put it, "You gonna fight, I'm gonna fight."
The excellent television documentary, Fire in Babylon, which chronicles the rise of West Indian cricket from the mid-70s, recalls that tactical reasons were not the only reason for Lloyd's development of a battery of fast bowlers. The backdrop of Black Power in the United States and apartheid in South Africa led to a revolutionary atmosphere throughout the Caribbean, with the stark contrast between the relative fortunes of the white and black populations becoming far less accepted and independence achieved for countries such as for Jamaica and Barbados.
Lloyd's team embodied this new found assertiveness and as Richards put it, the West Indies were driven by a desire to prove to those who viewed them as second class citizens that black people were "a little bit more useful than they see you." From that 1979-80 series in Australia, the West Indies went unbeaten in Test cricket until 1995. They pioneered a new way of playing the game based on one clear tactic: extreme, unrelenting pace.
***
Sheer pace has a special place in the lore and history of cricket. Bowlers reaching speeds beyond 90mph are revered, standing out among mere mortals of the bowling fraternity who operate in the more sedate lane between 80-85mph. Throughout the ages, there have been quick bowlers who have both intimidated batsmen and wowed spectators with their speed. From Fred Spofforth in the 1870s to Frank Tyson and Wes Hall in the 1950s, through Malcolm Marshall in the 80s to Allan Donald in the 90s and from Shoaib Akhtar in the early part of the millennium to Mitchell Johnson in recent years.
Pace is exciting and raw, glamorous even. But why does it thrill so much?
It could be the physical danger facing a batsman trying to hit a rock hard object being propelled at them at high speed. Tension is heightened and fear is in the air. According to Holding, the difference between 80 and 90mph is the extra dimension of whether a batsman can get hurt or not. It could be the sheer physicality, the timing and the power required to reach such speeds. Most simply, pace, in whichever endeavour in life, is electrifying.
Never was it more so than at Trent Bridge in 1998 when Michael Atherton faced what he described in his autobiography as "the most intense period of cricket I experienced in my career" from Donald. Watching the footage back on YouTube, what strikes you is not so much the pace of the bowling - although it was regularly hitting 94-95mph - but the atmosphere and tension it provoked among players and spectators.
It was sporting theatre of the very highest quality. That is what pace can do.
Roberts, Holding, Croft and Garner - the definition of intimidation through pace © Cricbuzz
With the game at Test level dominated by pace bowling, that same tactic, understandably, filtered down to county cricket. The stock of the overseas player in county cricket was at its height as almost every county had at least one high-class operator who usually stayed for the whole season and sometimes for several years in succession. As the 70s wore on, and counties came to realise that having a pace weapon of their own could lead to success as much as it had for the West Indies, cricket in England was littered with the very quickest in the world.
Former England and Middlesex bowler Mike Selvey, now a much respected cricket journalist, played during the peak years of county cricket's pace age. "At that time, on every county's wish list was a wizz-bang bowler," he says. "Most counties had two overseas players but your first choice was always going to be a quick bowler. There were some phenomenal bowlers around then and the number of genuinely fast bowlers was quite remarkable.
"It was a great education for people to play against all those bowlers, some of the greatest fast bowlers ever who played."
The world's best at that time turned up for a stint in county cricket, many year after year: Holding played for both Lancashire and Derbyshire, Croft for Lancashire, Garner had a long association with Somerset, Roberts and Marshall both played for Hampshire, Hadlee played for Nottinghamshire, Le Roux and Imran Khan for Sussex.
Behind the cream of the crop, there were plenty of other overseas fast bowlers around to continue the treatment handed out to county batsmen. "Even what you might call the second division quicks like Ezra Moseley, George Ferris, Winston Benjamin, were quick. They were everywhere," remembers Selvey. "Graham MacKensie, Sylvester Clarke (at Surrey). It was a fantastic time."
Selvey opened the bowling for Middlesex with Bajan Wayne Daniel for many years. Such was the strength of the West Indies' bowling stocks, Daniel, fiercely quick, only played ten Tests. For any other country, he could have even played 70 games. "Wayne didn't know how to bowl slow, he couldn't have bowled slow if he had tried," says Selvey.
"We were very complementary, specifically at Lord's. The one thing I never got asked in my career was 'Which end would you like?' We helped one another. People say that Wayne got me wickets, well I think I got an awful lot of wickets without him as well. Wayne was always the one who cranked it up when they wanted somebody to tickle them up a wee bit.
"The only time we ever had trouble with Wayne was for a brief time where he was bowling what seemed like gnat's piss. He was getting driven and Wayne never got driven. He had spotted this competition in The Sun for a demon bowler who would have got GBP 500 for hitting the stumps more than anybody else. We offered to double it and he started hitting people again."
Jack Russell at Gloucestershire had the best view in the house for Courtney Walsh's 11 year association with the county. "He was heaven to keep wicket to," says Russell. "I got chirpier in my older age and well, you can say anything you like to the opposition when Courtney is running in. When I first played at Gloucestershire, we had a slow attack and the opposition batsmen used to run in to the ground - so much were they looking forward to facing us. When we had Walsh, they used to come in looking like ghosts."
Russell was a brilliant wicket-keeper, one of the best England have ever produced, and a good enough batsman to score nearly 17,000 first-class runs. Yet he struggled, as did so many of his contemporaries, when faced with a barrage of pace.
"Garth le Roux nearly broke my foot one day down at Hove - now, he was quick," Russell remembers. "He hit me on the foot and I was struggling for a bit. He asked me if my foot was broken and I said I thought it might be. He told me to eff off then because they wanted to get off and get down the pub.
"Hadlee bowled me one over at Bristol and I missed all six balls by about six inches. It either missed my outside edge or the inside edge because he could make the ball talk. Even off his short run, he was still quick. Joel Garner is going to bowl you a yorker. You know it is coming - he could tell you a week before - but you still can't keep it out. It was so brilliant. The things those guys did with the ball; they weren't just quick, they were clever."
"The thing that these guys did was to educate, though. You learn from Joel Garner, you learn from Malcolm Marshall." © Getty
Traditionally, county cricket, with its hectic and unremitting schedule, has not been a breeding ground for genuinely fast bowlers. It simply takes too much out of them and bowlers, realising they cannot flog themselves day in and day out for six months, have to reign back. "I don't think the county game has ever encouraged people to bowl really quick," says Selvey.
One reason for the introduction of central contracts for England's players in 2000 was to take bowlers out of county action so they were fit for international duty. It has not, however, helped deliver a battery of frighteningly quick English bowlers in recent times even if Steve Harmison, Simon Jones and Mark Wood deserve honourable mentions.
"You count the number of genuine fast bowlers over the last 40 years for England to rank with the pace of the guys in the 80s," says Selvey. "Bob Willis, probably. John Snow was quick. Since then, I don't know who has been quick. There's very few England bowlers who have been right up there with Bob. I wouldn't like to put a figure on him, but he was genuinely fast."
It is not just England who have been recently unable to produce bowlers with sheer pace. Around the world, such cricketers are few and far between and have been for a decade. The Australian trio of Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and James Pattinson, who has just finished a stint with Nottinghamshire, may be about to embark on a sustained period of tormenting batsmen, capable, as they all are, of bowling well over 90mph, but elsewhere the cupboard is relatively bare compared to the 70s and 80s.
That is due, according to Selvey, to an increased workload for the world's best players and a greater intensity in international cricket. Holding and Thomson, the two quickest Selvey has seen - "I don't care that was 40 years ago, I know what I've seen" he says - had far less cricket to play than the top bowlers of today. As a result, the Starcs and Woods of this world get injured more frequently and cannot possibly reach top speed as often.
Understandably therefore, the proliferation of fast bowlers plying their trade in county cricket during the 70s and 80s compares markedly with now. Fast bowlers, when not playing for their country or earning a fortune in the IPL, are at home with their feet up. Pattinson's short stint - compared to the full seasons Holding and Hadlee managed - with Notts owes as much to his recent injuries and the need to work back up to full fitness as a desire to learn the art of bowling.
"You had players who could come to county cricket for a full season and use it as an education," says Selvey of the 1980s. "You wouldn't be able to get that these days because the intensity of international cricket and the variety of cricket precludes that. When was the last time a world-class fast bowler played a season of county cricket? I really can't think who that would be and you can understand why."
***
After leaving Middlesex, Selvey captained Glamorgan for a short stint. Then, the proliferation of pace bowlers throughout county cricket was still rife and impacted selection, tactics, contracts, the lot. "We had at that stage two overseas players, one was Javed Miandad and the other was Ezra Moseley," Selvey remembers. "Ezra got stress fractures of the back but they had put a moratorium on counties signing more overseas players so every other county had two and Glamorgan, who probably needed two more than anybody, had one.
"We signed Winston Davis but I could only play him or Javed. I look back now and it was quite ludicrous for me to think that we should play Winston ahead of Javed, but we did a lot of the time. The Glamorgan players were so used to people firing it up their nostrils that they just wanted someone to fire back. I'm not proud of it, but I had to leave out one of the greatest batsman ever out of a bloody county side. That was the mind-set; you just wanted a little bit of firepower."
The influence of the overseas teaaway quick was telling in other counties as well.
"There was a tendency of the team to rely on the overseas player and that's why Courtney left us," says Russell. "John Bracewell came in and said that the team has to do it without him. That sounds an odd thing to say but he believed that we relied on him too much. It affects the batters too because they don't think they have to get as many runs. Courtney used to bowl teams out for fun and people got off lightly because they didn't have to perform as much.
"You had to have good bowlers alongside the overseas. You went down to Hampshire and you had Tim Tremlett backing up Marshall. We had Sid Lawrence, Walshy and Kevan Curran at Gloucestershire. We had the best attack in the country and we should have won the Championship a couple of times in the 80s but our batsmen blew it. The overseas would complement the county's fast bowlers but you always had at least one really world class fast bowler bowling at you.
"The thing that these guys did was to educate, though. You learn from Joel Garner, you learn from Malcolm Marshall. I remember playing Marshall at Southampton and he was the smartest fast bowler I ever played against. He could swing it both ways but he was quick, skiddy. He used to show you the shine as he ran in and I could pick which way the ball was going to swing.
"If it was going to swing in, I would put open my front font to hit through the leg side for example. He was bowling to me and he could see me changing my position. I thought I needed all the help I could get here, he's bowling 100mph and he's swinging it. After a couple of overs, he started bowling round the wicket and he ran up behind the umpire so I couldn't see and at the last minute he would jump out and bowl! Brilliant."
Bob Willis, the last fearsome-fast England bowler © Getty
Quick bowling dominated the world game, including county cricket, for much of the late 70s and the 1980s. In all facets of life, there is a tendency to look back at times past with rose tinted glasses. Was it really as special as people make out?
"There is a tendency to look back favourably, yes but I look back and it was magical," said Russell. "It wasn't nice facing it but now, you think, goodness that was a great challenge. I'm glad that people like Wayne Daniel hit me and made you hop around. There were no cheap runs against those guys. It really was a golden period."
Selvey concurs. "They were different times. But it was a fantastic time."
© Cricbuzz
http://www.cricbuzz.com/cricket-news/96890/county-cricket-and-the-enduring-appeal-of-raw-pace
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Raw pace of bowlers in an era when technology wasn't available as it is today, made batsmen, work really hard on their technique to earn their runs. Today effectiveness of fast bowlers is often measured by their change of pace and guile in outdoing batsman. Isn't it one of the reasons why batsman who play well in test cricket around the globe are extremely find?
@WAJsal @Arsalan @Zaki @BDforever : your views gentlemen!
County Cricket and the enduring appeal of raw pace
Rob Johnston
Michael Holding, doing what he does best, for Lancashire © Getty
It is an iconic picture. Four brooding West Indian fast bowlers standing in a line, one behind the other with the shortest at the front and the tallest at the back, looking menacingly in to the camera. It was taken in 1979 during a time in world cricket when pace was king, a golden age of genuinely quick fast bowlers, the sheer number and quality of which had not been seen before and has not been seen since. Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Colin Croft and Joel Garner, a feared foursome who would be the main reasons the West Indies beat Australia for the first time in 1979-80.
Many will recall the exploits of the great West Indian fast bowlers during the 70s and 80s - and there were seemingly dozens of bowlers from the Caribbean who could reach frightening speeds - but there were plenty of others around the world capable of reaching and exceeding 90mph. Australia had Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thompson, England had Jon Snow and Bob Willis, New Zealand had Richard Hadlee, South Africa had Clive Rice and Garth le Roux, Pakistan had Imran Khan. We could go on.
There were some iconic Test series as the West Indies dominated the international scene and the rest of the world either went in to self-preservation mode or tried to play them at their own game. In 1976, so battered and bruised were India that their captain, Bishan Bedi, refused to send out the final two batsmen in a Kingston Test, handing a ten wicket win to the home side. That 1979-80 series in Australia, which the West Indies won 2-0, showcased the sheer, thrilling brutality of the pace on each side as Lillee and Thomson went toe to toe with Holding and Garner.
The humiliating tour of Australia in 1975, which the West Indies lost 5-1, was the catalyst for the pace race. Lillie and Thomson ran riot and pulverised the West Indian batsmen on route to 56 wickets between them. Added to the aggression they were having to face on the pitch, the West Indies experienced racism on a regular basis throughout the tour. Captain Clive Lloyd vowed it would never happen again and went on the look-out for bowlers who could decimate as much as the Australian's had. As Viv Richard's put it, "You gonna fight, I'm gonna fight."
The excellent television documentary, Fire in Babylon, which chronicles the rise of West Indian cricket from the mid-70s, recalls that tactical reasons were not the only reason for Lloyd's development of a battery of fast bowlers. The backdrop of Black Power in the United States and apartheid in South Africa led to a revolutionary atmosphere throughout the Caribbean, with the stark contrast between the relative fortunes of the white and black populations becoming far less accepted and independence achieved for countries such as for Jamaica and Barbados.
Lloyd's team embodied this new found assertiveness and as Richards put it, the West Indies were driven by a desire to prove to those who viewed them as second class citizens that black people were "a little bit more useful than they see you." From that 1979-80 series in Australia, the West Indies went unbeaten in Test cricket until 1995. They pioneered a new way of playing the game based on one clear tactic: extreme, unrelenting pace.
***
Sheer pace has a special place in the lore and history of cricket. Bowlers reaching speeds beyond 90mph are revered, standing out among mere mortals of the bowling fraternity who operate in the more sedate lane between 80-85mph. Throughout the ages, there have been quick bowlers who have both intimidated batsmen and wowed spectators with their speed. From Fred Spofforth in the 1870s to Frank Tyson and Wes Hall in the 1950s, through Malcolm Marshall in the 80s to Allan Donald in the 90s and from Shoaib Akhtar in the early part of the millennium to Mitchell Johnson in recent years.
Pace is exciting and raw, glamorous even. But why does it thrill so much?
It could be the physical danger facing a batsman trying to hit a rock hard object being propelled at them at high speed. Tension is heightened and fear is in the air. According to Holding, the difference between 80 and 90mph is the extra dimension of whether a batsman can get hurt or not. It could be the sheer physicality, the timing and the power required to reach such speeds. Most simply, pace, in whichever endeavour in life, is electrifying.
Never was it more so than at Trent Bridge in 1998 when Michael Atherton faced what he described in his autobiography as "the most intense period of cricket I experienced in my career" from Donald. Watching the footage back on YouTube, what strikes you is not so much the pace of the bowling - although it was regularly hitting 94-95mph - but the atmosphere and tension it provoked among players and spectators.
It was sporting theatre of the very highest quality. That is what pace can do.
Roberts, Holding, Croft and Garner - the definition of intimidation through pace © Cricbuzz
With the game at Test level dominated by pace bowling, that same tactic, understandably, filtered down to county cricket. The stock of the overseas player in county cricket was at its height as almost every county had at least one high-class operator who usually stayed for the whole season and sometimes for several years in succession. As the 70s wore on, and counties came to realise that having a pace weapon of their own could lead to success as much as it had for the West Indies, cricket in England was littered with the very quickest in the world.
Former England and Middlesex bowler Mike Selvey, now a much respected cricket journalist, played during the peak years of county cricket's pace age. "At that time, on every county's wish list was a wizz-bang bowler," he says. "Most counties had two overseas players but your first choice was always going to be a quick bowler. There were some phenomenal bowlers around then and the number of genuinely fast bowlers was quite remarkable.
"It was a great education for people to play against all those bowlers, some of the greatest fast bowlers ever who played."
The world's best at that time turned up for a stint in county cricket, many year after year: Holding played for both Lancashire and Derbyshire, Croft for Lancashire, Garner had a long association with Somerset, Roberts and Marshall both played for Hampshire, Hadlee played for Nottinghamshire, Le Roux and Imran Khan for Sussex.
Behind the cream of the crop, there were plenty of other overseas fast bowlers around to continue the treatment handed out to county batsmen. "Even what you might call the second division quicks like Ezra Moseley, George Ferris, Winston Benjamin, were quick. They were everywhere," remembers Selvey. "Graham MacKensie, Sylvester Clarke (at Surrey). It was a fantastic time."
Selvey opened the bowling for Middlesex with Bajan Wayne Daniel for many years. Such was the strength of the West Indies' bowling stocks, Daniel, fiercely quick, only played ten Tests. For any other country, he could have even played 70 games. "Wayne didn't know how to bowl slow, he couldn't have bowled slow if he had tried," says Selvey.
"We were very complementary, specifically at Lord's. The one thing I never got asked in my career was 'Which end would you like?' We helped one another. People say that Wayne got me wickets, well I think I got an awful lot of wickets without him as well. Wayne was always the one who cranked it up when they wanted somebody to tickle them up a wee bit.
"The only time we ever had trouble with Wayne was for a brief time where he was bowling what seemed like gnat's piss. He was getting driven and Wayne never got driven. He had spotted this competition in The Sun for a demon bowler who would have got GBP 500 for hitting the stumps more than anybody else. We offered to double it and he started hitting people again."
Jack Russell at Gloucestershire had the best view in the house for Courtney Walsh's 11 year association with the county. "He was heaven to keep wicket to," says Russell. "I got chirpier in my older age and well, you can say anything you like to the opposition when Courtney is running in. When I first played at Gloucestershire, we had a slow attack and the opposition batsmen used to run in to the ground - so much were they looking forward to facing us. When we had Walsh, they used to come in looking like ghosts."
Russell was a brilliant wicket-keeper, one of the best England have ever produced, and a good enough batsman to score nearly 17,000 first-class runs. Yet he struggled, as did so many of his contemporaries, when faced with a barrage of pace.
"Garth le Roux nearly broke my foot one day down at Hove - now, he was quick," Russell remembers. "He hit me on the foot and I was struggling for a bit. He asked me if my foot was broken and I said I thought it might be. He told me to eff off then because they wanted to get off and get down the pub.
"Hadlee bowled me one over at Bristol and I missed all six balls by about six inches. It either missed my outside edge or the inside edge because he could make the ball talk. Even off his short run, he was still quick. Joel Garner is going to bowl you a yorker. You know it is coming - he could tell you a week before - but you still can't keep it out. It was so brilliant. The things those guys did with the ball; they weren't just quick, they were clever."
"The thing that these guys did was to educate, though. You learn from Joel Garner, you learn from Malcolm Marshall." © Getty
Traditionally, county cricket, with its hectic and unremitting schedule, has not been a breeding ground for genuinely fast bowlers. It simply takes too much out of them and bowlers, realising they cannot flog themselves day in and day out for six months, have to reign back. "I don't think the county game has ever encouraged people to bowl really quick," says Selvey.
One reason for the introduction of central contracts for England's players in 2000 was to take bowlers out of county action so they were fit for international duty. It has not, however, helped deliver a battery of frighteningly quick English bowlers in recent times even if Steve Harmison, Simon Jones and Mark Wood deserve honourable mentions.
"You count the number of genuine fast bowlers over the last 40 years for England to rank with the pace of the guys in the 80s," says Selvey. "Bob Willis, probably. John Snow was quick. Since then, I don't know who has been quick. There's very few England bowlers who have been right up there with Bob. I wouldn't like to put a figure on him, but he was genuinely fast."
It is not just England who have been recently unable to produce bowlers with sheer pace. Around the world, such cricketers are few and far between and have been for a decade. The Australian trio of Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and James Pattinson, who has just finished a stint with Nottinghamshire, may be about to embark on a sustained period of tormenting batsmen, capable, as they all are, of bowling well over 90mph, but elsewhere the cupboard is relatively bare compared to the 70s and 80s.
That is due, according to Selvey, to an increased workload for the world's best players and a greater intensity in international cricket. Holding and Thomson, the two quickest Selvey has seen - "I don't care that was 40 years ago, I know what I've seen" he says - had far less cricket to play than the top bowlers of today. As a result, the Starcs and Woods of this world get injured more frequently and cannot possibly reach top speed as often.
Understandably therefore, the proliferation of fast bowlers plying their trade in county cricket during the 70s and 80s compares markedly with now. Fast bowlers, when not playing for their country or earning a fortune in the IPL, are at home with their feet up. Pattinson's short stint - compared to the full seasons Holding and Hadlee managed - with Notts owes as much to his recent injuries and the need to work back up to full fitness as a desire to learn the art of bowling.
"You had players who could come to county cricket for a full season and use it as an education," says Selvey of the 1980s. "You wouldn't be able to get that these days because the intensity of international cricket and the variety of cricket precludes that. When was the last time a world-class fast bowler played a season of county cricket? I really can't think who that would be and you can understand why."
***
After leaving Middlesex, Selvey captained Glamorgan for a short stint. Then, the proliferation of pace bowlers throughout county cricket was still rife and impacted selection, tactics, contracts, the lot. "We had at that stage two overseas players, one was Javed Miandad and the other was Ezra Moseley," Selvey remembers. "Ezra got stress fractures of the back but they had put a moratorium on counties signing more overseas players so every other county had two and Glamorgan, who probably needed two more than anybody, had one.
"We signed Winston Davis but I could only play him or Javed. I look back now and it was quite ludicrous for me to think that we should play Winston ahead of Javed, but we did a lot of the time. The Glamorgan players were so used to people firing it up their nostrils that they just wanted someone to fire back. I'm not proud of it, but I had to leave out one of the greatest batsman ever out of a bloody county side. That was the mind-set; you just wanted a little bit of firepower."
The influence of the overseas teaaway quick was telling in other counties as well.
"There was a tendency of the team to rely on the overseas player and that's why Courtney left us," says Russell. "John Bracewell came in and said that the team has to do it without him. That sounds an odd thing to say but he believed that we relied on him too much. It affects the batters too because they don't think they have to get as many runs. Courtney used to bowl teams out for fun and people got off lightly because they didn't have to perform as much.
"You had to have good bowlers alongside the overseas. You went down to Hampshire and you had Tim Tremlett backing up Marshall. We had Sid Lawrence, Walshy and Kevan Curran at Gloucestershire. We had the best attack in the country and we should have won the Championship a couple of times in the 80s but our batsmen blew it. The overseas would complement the county's fast bowlers but you always had at least one really world class fast bowler bowling at you.
"The thing that these guys did was to educate, though. You learn from Joel Garner, you learn from Malcolm Marshall. I remember playing Marshall at Southampton and he was the smartest fast bowler I ever played against. He could swing it both ways but he was quick, skiddy. He used to show you the shine as he ran in and I could pick which way the ball was going to swing.
"If it was going to swing in, I would put open my front font to hit through the leg side for example. He was bowling to me and he could see me changing my position. I thought I needed all the help I could get here, he's bowling 100mph and he's swinging it. After a couple of overs, he started bowling round the wicket and he ran up behind the umpire so I couldn't see and at the last minute he would jump out and bowl! Brilliant."
Bob Willis, the last fearsome-fast England bowler © Getty
Quick bowling dominated the world game, including county cricket, for much of the late 70s and the 1980s. In all facets of life, there is a tendency to look back at times past with rose tinted glasses. Was it really as special as people make out?
"There is a tendency to look back favourably, yes but I look back and it was magical," said Russell. "It wasn't nice facing it but now, you think, goodness that was a great challenge. I'm glad that people like Wayne Daniel hit me and made you hop around. There were no cheap runs against those guys. It really was a golden period."
Selvey concurs. "They were different times. But it was a fantastic time."
© Cricbuzz
http://www.cricbuzz.com/cricket-news/96890/county-cricket-and-the-enduring-appeal-of-raw-pace
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Raw pace of bowlers in an era when technology wasn't available as it is today, made batsmen, work really hard on their technique to earn their runs. Today effectiveness of fast bowlers is often measured by their change of pace and guile in outdoing batsman. Isn't it one of the reasons why batsman who play well in test cricket around the globe are extremely find?
@WAJsal @Arsalan @Zaki @BDforever : your views gentlemen!
