Jun 04, 2014 10:46 AM
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Adopted from 99reallifestories.com which features the complete article. The below one is only an extract.
Eastleigh is a quiet, unremarkable suburb of Southampton, in the heart of Hampshire – the county that Malcolm Marshall made his home for 11 years. It was Eastleigh where Marshall married Connie Earle, his long-time girlfriend and the mother of his nine-year-old son Mali. He’d been married for five weeks when he died of colon cancer in a hospital in his native Bridgetown on November 4th.
Malcolm Denzil Marshall(18 April 1958 – 4 November 1999), a West Indian cricketer, is regarded as one of the finest and fastest pacemen ever to have played Test Cricket. His astonishing Test bowling average of 20.94 is the best of anyone who has taken 200 or more wickets. Marshall had the quickest of bowling arms and the most astute of brains to analyse the characteristics and weaknesses of batsmen. At 5ft 11in, Marshall was small for a fast bowler: his West Indian contemporaries in the early 1980s — Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner and Colin Croft—all towered over him. The best fast bowlers have always had the height to get the ball to bounce. The way Marshall overcame his lack of inches promises to change the face of cricket by inspiring others of short stature to emulate him. A whippy action made him as quick a bowler as anybody, and he carefully developed both stamina and guile. Marshall, made the ball skid and had to make do with this lower trajectory, yet he kept up with the tall men when it came to terrorizing batsmen with pace. Marshall was also an utility Middle-order batsman with ten Test fifties and seven first-class centuries.
International debut and Journey
Marshall made his Test début in the Second Test at Bangalore on 15 December 1978. 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 the English County Hampshire saw enough in him to take him on as their overseas player for 1979. Marshall was also in the West Indies’ World Cup, but did not play a match in the tournament. Marshall came to prominence in 1980, when in the third Test at Old Trafford he accounted for Mike Gatting, Brian Roase 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. Malcolm Marshall was head and shoulders above his contemporaries like Michael Holding and even Joel Garner. He was the shortest of them all, but he had the most wickets, lowest average and lowest bowling strike rate of that bunch. Marshall even had the best Test batting average of the fast bowlers of his era – 18.85.
One of Marshall’s finest moments in cricket was when he broke his thumb in a Test match against England at Headingley in 1984. He sustained an injury in the first innings of the game, and was only able to bowl six wicketless overs. To everyone’s surprise, “Macco” came out to bat at number 11. That move helped Larry Gomes reach a deserved century. When the West Indies bowled again, Marshall bowled with just one arm; fortunately for him, his bowling arm was good. He wrecked England with 7/53, which was then his career-best and helped the West Indies to an eight-wicket victory.
Illness & death
In 1996, Marshall became coach both of Hampshire and the West Indies, although the latter’s steadily declining standards during this period brought a considerable amount of criticism his way. In 1999, during the World Cup, it was revealed that Marshall had Colon Cancer. He immediately left his coaching job to begin treatment, but this was ultimately unsuccessful. He married his long-term partner, Connie Roberta Earle, in Romsey on 25 September 1999, and returned to his home town, where he died on 4 November aged forty-one, weighing little more than 25 kg.
Honour
One of the greatest bowlers ever was honoured in the year 2000 at Lord’s as a trophy bearing his name was unveiled. The Malcolm Marshall Memorial Trophy is awarded to the top bowler in each England-West Indies Test series,
“I know Malcolm must be smiling down on us today, ” said Mrs Marshall during the unveiling of the trophy. “He always took pride in his achievements and, even though he was quite modest, it would please him to be honoured in this manner, ” she said.
Marshall still holds the record for wickets taken in a series between West Indies and England, with 35 in the 1988 series.
“The trophy is a fitting tribute to a superb cricketer. Whoever wins it will know they have followed in the footsteps of the one of the best fast bowlers of all time.” Remarked Tim Lamb, the then Chief Executive of ECB.
