On the cricket pitch, Malcolm Marshall was one of the most feared fast bowlers, though his small stature didn’t immediately drive fear into opposing batsmen.
But such was the measure of the 180cm man that he appeared as imposing as any 200cm man.
The Barbadian goes down as one of the greatest and most accomplished fast bowlers in Test cricket history, boasting a Test bowling average of 20.94, the best of anyone who has taken 200 or more Test wickets.
Marshall had deadly pace from his bowling and an even deadlier bouncer and during the 1980s he was clearly the most successful Test bowler with 235 wickets at an average of 18.47 over a five-year period.
Marshall was also a decent middle-order batsman, registering ten Test half-centuries and seven first-class centuries. At the end of his Test career, he was the all-time highest wicket-taker for West Indies with 376 scalps, a record he held until a year before he died when Courtney Walsh breached the milestone.
Ten years after his passing Marshall was inducted into the International Cricket Council Cricket Hall of Fame, and to mark 150 years of the Cricketers’ Almanack Wisden named him in an all-time Test World X1.
