From Fraser’s accuracy to Malcolm's pace and the rivalry of Gough and Caddick...
Peter Hayter, The Cricket Paper’s esteemed correspondent, looks back over reporting on England and identifies the greatest players over this period. This week, the pacemen – Part One
New Feature... ENGLAND’S GREATEST... the the best over Who have been Peter Hayter past 30 years? continues his assessment Malcolm’s radar did occasionally go on the blink, a fault Ray Illingworth and his bowling coach Peter Lever tried to fix with disastrous results
Magnificently lugubrious and grumpy before his time, the young Fraser made an immediate impression on his debut when, in the third Ashes Test at Edgbaston, he became the first man to budge Steve Waugh all summer (after scores of 177, 152 and 21 all not out).
The Middlesex seamer made an even better one in the first Test of the 1990 winter tour to West Indies at Sabina Park, bowling with metronomic line and length to dismiss the best batting side in world cricket for 164 and set up a shock victory for Graham Gooch’s young underdogs.
Those ancient qualities had been drummed into him from his youth through the necessity, while representing Stanmore 3rd XI, of protecting an offside ring whose average age was older than time itself.
Dogged by a hip injury in his early career so serious that Middlesex advised him to consider quitting, he refused to buckle and while, as the years passed, his ability to bowl a heavy ball was occasionally compromised, his control never wavered.
Bowling always looked like incredibly hard work for him, for the simple reason that it was, a fact reflected by The Cricket Paper’s Martin Johnson who once memorably described ‘Gus’ running in to bowl,“looking like he’d caught his braces on the sightscreen”.
Mike Atherton, his great friend and captain, also enjoyed winding him up by claiming Fraser’s greatest weapon was that ability to do batsmen for lack of pace.
He had his laughs on the 1997-98 tour to West Indies, taking 27 wickets at 18.22, including a career best 8-53 in the first innings of the second Test in Trinidad and 3-57 in the second, yet his brilliant display was overshadowed by West Indies’ narrow victory.
Against Brian Lara, the best batsman of his generation, Fraser’s fortunes were decidedly mixed.
On the plus side he dismissed the left-hander seven times, but he was also a member of the attack that Lara hit for 375 in 1994, deciding against sledging the batsman after he finally played and missed several hours into his world record innings on the grounds that:“I don’t suppose it’s appropriate to call you a lucky **** when you’ve just passed 350.” Then, in the second Test of 1995 at Lord’s, he returned to fine leg to savour his revenge only to be greeted with:“Oi, Fraser, you plonker. I paid to watch Lara bat not you bowl.”
Devon Malcolm
(Tests - 40.Wickets - 128; 5-wicket innings - 5; 10-wkt. matches - 2; best bowling - 9-57; average - 37.09) “And who can forget Malcolm Devon?” asked England’s beleagured chairman of selectors Ted Dexter, attempting to look on the bright side of their catastrophic defeat to Australia in 1989 (to which Derbyshire supporters responded by renaming him Ted Lord).
But, out of those, Ashes England found a spearhead of genuine pace and menace who, while never the model of consistency, did indeed provide some unforgettable memories.
Malcolm’s first major contribution came largely by accident when, grazing on the Sabina Park outfield in February 1990, his comedy mis-field turned the course of the first Test against West Indies on his birth island of Jamaica.
At 62-0 on the opening day of the series, Gordon Greenidge saw the ball bounce off Malcolm’s shins, called Desmond Haynes for a second and was run out by Malcolm’s bullet arm.
His next, in trapping Vivian Richards lbw, was even more significant because he beat the Masterblaster for sheer pace, as he did again when he shattered his stumps in the second innings. Famously, Richards chose not to wear a helmet, preferring instead to rely on eye and instinct, but so moved was he by the whirlwind action and speed of Malcolm that, it was widely believed, he strongly considered it now.
One of the reasons was that, though he was ferociously strong and lightning quick, Malcolm’s radar did occasionally go on the blink, a fault Ray Illingworth and his bowling coach Peter Lever tried to correct at the start of his final tour, to South Africa in 1995-96, with disastrous results, the worst of which was to erode the gentle giant’s confidence.
It was hard to avoid the feeling that they would have done better to have left well alone because, while nowhere near perfect, when Malcolm’s action clicked the results could be utterly devastating, as in the final Test against the same opponents at the Oval the previous year.
Legend has it that, after having had his England badge removed from his helmet by a bouncer from Fanie de Villiers, Malcolm dusted himself down and told his opponents:“You guys are history.”
The phrase has passed into the chronicles, appearing in several autobiographies other than Malcolm’s own (it is the title of his) and even if he didn’t actually say it at the time he should have done, for his response was to produce one of the most lung-suckingly brutal spells ever witnessed beneath the gasholders.
To put the performance in its rightful context, Malcolm’s 9-57 are the best figures in an innings by an England fast bowler, the second best by any England bowler (to Jim Laker’s 10-53) and the eighth best in Test history by any bowler from any nation.
Not for nothing did President Nelson Mandela greet him a year later with:“I know you.You are the destroyer.” Shame he wasn’t held in quite such high regard by the England management.
the devil into opposing batsmen except a bit of his own devilry.
Some went so far as to insist, indeed, that Caddick did not make the best use of his strength, height and whippy arm action to sufficiently intimidate opposing batsmen.
Yet statistics suggest he was hugely underrated.
During a decade of taking the new ball for England he enjoyed a sometimes less than healthy rivalry with his partner Darren Gough, Caddick producing 13 five-wicket hauls to the Yorkshireman’s nine, and his attempt to rib his teammate for the fact that only one of them had succeeded in putting his name on the Lord’s honours board did not go down well.
But his career tally of 234 Test wickets at 29.91 earned him seventh place on the list of England’s all-time wicket-takers (one place above Gough on 229 and one below Alec Bedser on 236) before both men were shunted down the order by Matthew Hoggard, Graeme Swann, Stuart Broad and James Anderson.
Caddick’s finest hour might have come at Port-of-Spain in the third Test against West Indies in 1994 when his 6-65 left England needing just 194 for victory. Hurricane Curtly Ambrose dashed those hopes, however, as England were bowled out for 46.
Six years later, he got his own back in style. First, in the second Test at Lord’s, he took 5-16 as West Indies were bowled out for 54 to set up victory inside three days.
Then, in the fourth at Headingly, he followed that up with 5-14 to scuttle West Indies for 61 and clinch a two-day rout.
A private man, Caddick sometimes did feel an outsider within the team, as much for the fact that, from his accent, he could never have been mistaken for being a native of Christchurch, Dorset. But during a time of rare highs, Caddick produced more than his fair share.
Darren Gough
(Tests - 58.Wickets - 229; 5-wicket innings - 9; 10-wkt. matches - 0; best bowling - 6-42; average - 28.40) The ‘Dazzler’ certainly enjoyed his reputation as England cricket’s great showman. Off the field he played up to the hype and to the role of pantomime character named “daft as a brush” and teammates would readily pass on stories supporting the notion. As, by the way, would he. “Here,” he was reported to have said at the end of one long-haul fight,“don’t these planes get low to the ground when they land?”
“Strong as an ox, me,” he once declared after a long spell.“That’s why they call me rhino.”
And Albaroni, the new Italian restaurant he had just discovered – and was busy recommending to everyone in the dressing room – turned out to be the local branch of All Bar One. But above all else, Gough was one of England’s best exponents of conventional and later reverse-swing in modern times.
Something of a wayward talent in his early days, his light bulb moment came with encouragement from Yorkshire’s overseas star and West Indies skipper Richie Richardson who advised him to go for broke.
Thereafter consistently threatening at skiddy pace, as well as unerringly accurate, Gough thrilled his Headingley home crowd in August 1998 when taking 3-58 and 6-42 to help clinch England’s first Test series victory over senior opposition for a decade and how the man of the match adjudicator escaped with his life for nominating Mark Butcher instead is anyone’s guess.
But his brightest day came in the 1999 Sydney Test, when he took the first Ashes hat-trick by an Englishman for 100 years, nipping out Ian Healy, Stuart MacGill and Colin Miller in front of the Barmy Army.
Over time the strain his bustling action out on his body took their toll, but it held together well enough for him to forge a second career on Strictly Come Dancing and his wit well enough for a third, on talkSPORT radio and, despite some personal and financial issues, his smile can still light up a hundred rooms. Part 2 – the pacemen up
to the present day