Day when Patterson bowled like the wind and even Gooch felt he might get hurt
Garfield Robinson looks back at a fast bowling career that burned fiercely but all too briefly
The master batsman recalled: “At that point, for the first and, I think, only time, I began saying to myself, ‘Graham, it might be doing yourself a favour if you get out, this boy Patterson is really firing and it could get very nasty indeed. If you don’t watch it you could be hit very badly’.
“It was the only time I thought I might be hurt at the crease. Now, I found that I was crouching very low, knees really bent, even before Patterson was into his delivery stride. Not a good feeling at all.”
Graham is Graham Gooch and he was writing in his autobiography about his experience facing West Indian speedster Patrick Patterson on what was a dicey Sabina Park surface in February 1986. It was the Jamaican’s first Test and he was bowling like the wind.
England had the misfortune of being the first international team to feel his fury, and considering the visitors also had to Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall and Joel Garner to contend with, it must have been an overall daunting experience. As problematic as the other fast men were, however, it was Patterson who was the most frightening.
His reputation grew rather quickly. He made his first-class debut for Jamaica in 1982-83, playing only two games and capturing only four wickets. The Jamaican selectors didn’t seem convinced he deserved a regular spot, but West Indies captain Clive Lloyd helped to secure a contract with Lancashire after Patterson impressed him in the nets. In 1984-85 he represented Tasmania in the Sheffield Shield.
Current secretary of the West Indies Player’s Association and then opening batsman for Jamaica, Wayne Lewis, said that when Patterson reported for the beginning of the 1985-86 Shell Shield season: “He was bigger, fitter.You could see the experience playing in England gave him more confidence.”
Guyana was the first team to step into the fast bowler’s line of fire. Batting first, they were dismissed for 41. Patterson, who along with Walsh, Holding, and the very capable Aaron Daley, formed a world-class four-pronged pace attack, took 7-24. Walsh took eight wickets in the second innings and Jamaica, given a hard time by Guyana’s spinners, won by three wickets.
It was then the turn of the Leeward Islands. They arrived with an almighty batting unit, headed by captain and world batting king, Viv Richards. It also included Richie Richardson and regional stalwarts like Luther Kelly, Ralston Otto, and Enoch Lewis. They were blown away for 77 in the first innings and 162 in the second, Patterson 3-18 and 4-37.
Asked upon his arrival on Jamaican soil if he dreaded the home team’s pace unit, the Master Blaster responded: “Wait until you see my pace.” He had in his team Winston Benjamin and Eldine Baptiste, along with George Ferris and Anthony Merrick.
But their pace paled in comparison to Patterson’s, who knocked over Richardson in both innings and captured Richards’ prized scalp in the second. “When Richie Richardson came out (to bat) you could see the fear in his eyes. It’s like he wanted to send for a helmet but didn’t because of ego,” remarked Lewis.
England first got sight of Patterson during the first ODI, which was played prior to the first Test. This was the game of Gatting’s infamous broken nose. Tim Robinson and Gower faced four deliveries apiece when Patterson dismissed them both before they had scored. “Then Gatting and I,” related Gooch, “got us into the 40s, when Gatt went to hook Malcolm Marshall. He missed and the ball smashed into his nose.”
Marshall picks up the story in his autobiography, Maco. “As the other West Indian players rushed to his aid I couldn’t bear to look. I could feel myself close to passing out, my head went dizzy and I thought I was going to be sick… I went to pick up the ball and to my horror I found a piece of Gatting’s nose bone lodged in the seam. I dropped it like a hand grenade, the feeling of nausea surging back.”
Marshall also felt that the fate of the series was sealed in that moment. “It took me many minutes to regain my composure and my appetite for battle after Gatt had been led away in deep distress. I recovered; England did not.
“I sensed their morale was carted off to hospital with their vice-captain and they came to the joint conclusion, there and then, that there was no escape from the second successive ‘blackwash’.” Bowled out for 145,
England lost the game by six wickets. Gatting, in fine form early in the tour, had to return home for treatment.
The Test began three days later. New man Patterson, eager to impress and to enhance his burgeoning reputation for sweltering speed, was raring to go. His delivery stride was laden with menace, his leading leg rising to about chest height, studs pointing straight down the wicket before landing with a force which was enough, former England fast bowler Mike Selvey said: “To measure on the Richter Scale.”
If there was little of Marshall’s nuance in Patterson’s bowling, there was all of Marshall’s pace, and then some. Long time West Indian commentator, the late Tony Cozier, who would have seen most of the game’s express bowlers going back to the Fifties, said Patterson could bowl a cricket ball as fast as any man ever has, and favourable comparisons to the brutally quick Jeff Thomson were not unfounded.
In that Sabina Park Test, England were flattened for 159 and 152 and West Indies won by 10 wickets. Patterson, 7-74 in the game, won the man-of-thematch award as much for the wickets he grabbed as for the terror he fomented.
England’s batsmen never recovered from the scars inflicted at Sabina Park. Only one batsman, Gower, averaged over 30, and there were only 10 halfcenturies all from English batsmen. In contrast, eight West Indian batsman, including Malcolm Marshall and Michael Holding, averaged over 30, and there were four centuries, including Richards’ record breaking 56-ball hundred in Antigua, and 12 50s.
Patterson remained a threat throughout, snatching 19 wickets at 22.42. It was to be his most productive series. Marshall and Garner captured 27 wickets apiece, while Holding took 16 in four games.
The West Indies’ abundance of highclass fast bowling options during that period meant that Patterson was not able to claim a permanent spot. His pace never deserted him but he never managed to develop enough skills to sufficiently augment his terrifying speed.
He had a few good series, most notably in India in 1987-88 and when he made a comeback against Australia in the West Indies in 1991-92. In Australia in 1988-89 he was struggling through a tough series when Steve Waugh, spurred on by vocal close-in fielders, bowled him a number of short-pitched deliveries. Upset, Patterson ventured into the Australian dressing room at the end of the day threatening to “kill” them next day. The result? Patterson 5-39 and Australia shot out for 114.
In 28 Tests, Patterson captured 93 wickets at 30.9. He last appeared in West Indies colours in 1993 in Cape Town in an ODI against Pakistan. Apparently the fast bowler had fallen foul of the authorities on the previous tour of Australia. Today he is something of a recluse, rarely seen in public and rarely receiving visitors.