Malcolm Marshall (18 April 1958 – 4 November 1999)

Malcolm Denzil Marshall (18 April 1958 – 4 November 1999) was a Barbadian cricketer. Primarily a fast bowler, Marshall is widely regarded as the greatest and most accomplished fast bowler of the modern era in Test cricket. He is often acknowledged as the greatest West Indian fast bowler of all time, and certainly one of the most complete fast bowlers the cricketing world ever saw. His Test bowling average of 20.94 is the best of anyone who has taken 200 or more wickets. He achieved his bowling success despite being, by the standards of other fast bowlers of his time, a short man – he stood at 180 cm (5 ft 11 in),[1] while most of the great quicks have been well above 182 cm (6 ft 0 in) and many great West Indian fast bowlers, such as Joel Garner, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, were 197 cm (6 ft 6 in) or above. He generated fearsome pace from his bowling action, with a dangerous bouncer. Marshall was also a very dangerous lower middle-order batsman with ten Test fifties and seven first-class centuries.

In 2009, Marshall was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. To mark 150 years of the Cricketers' Almanack, Wisden named him in an all-time Test World XI.

Marshall made his Test début in the Second Test at Bangalore on 15 December 1978. He immediately developed a career-long antipathy to Dilip Vengsarkar due to his aggressive appealing. Despite doing little of note in the three Tests he played on that tour, he did take 37 wickets in all first-class games, and Hampshire saw enough in him to take him on as their overseas player for 1979, remaining with the county until 1993.

Marshall came to prominence in 1980, when in the third Test at Old Trafford he accounted for Mike Gatting, Brian Rose, and Peter Willey in short order to spark an England collapse, although the match was eventually drawn despite Marshall taking 7–24. After 1980/81 he was out of the Test side for two years, but an excellent 1982 season when he took 134 wickets at under 16 apiece, including a career-best 8–71 against Worcestershire, saw him recalled and thereafter he remained a fixture until the end of his international career.

In seven successive Test series from 1982/83 to 1985/86, he took 21 or more wickets each time, in the last five of them averaging under 20. His most productive series in this period was the 1983/84 rubber against India when he claimed 33 wickets as well as averaging 34 with the bat and making his highest Test score of 92 at Kanpur. A few months later he took five in an innings twice at home against Australia. At the peak of his career, he turned down an offer of US$1 million to join a rebel West Indies team on a tour to South Africa, still suffering international sporting isolation due to apartheid.

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