ROEBUCK_ON_WARNE_19SEP93

Two greats declare their genius - Peter Roebuck

FAREWELL 1993, the season of angry discord. England lost to Australia, the team`s lack of adequate cricketers, especially bowlers, compounded by stupid management. How important, therefore, to end on a high, with unstinting tribute to two bowling greats, one just arrived, the other about to depart: Shane Warne and Malcolm Marshall.

Warne arrived like the Belle of the Ball, indeed with a belle of a ball. To produce that in-ducking, overspun, ripped leg-break which pitched outside leg stump and hit the top of the off is the impossible dream.

Acknowledged the best batsman against spin in England, Mike Gatting left the stage incredulous, turning back more than once, as helpless as a conjurer`s stooge, disbelieving the trickery. It was not his wallet that he had lost but, it now seems, his Test career.

We must not be unkind to our own, but wishful thinking is no help either: Ian Salisbury is not in Warne`s class. The NatWest final showed Salisbury`s confidence running out of his head as if through a colander. There is talk of shoulder trouble. Because we have seen so little leg-spinning it is easy to forget how many of that breed once developed such chronic injuries that they could bowl only googlies, or indeed not at all. Ian Peebles, who bowled Don Bradman in the 1930s and wrote beautifully for this newspaper, was one such. Defensive leg-spinners who roll the ball rather than spin it, as Robin Hobbs used to do, feel no such pain, but Warne is not of that ilk.

Cricketers need their bodies intact. A single throw from the outfield can ruin the outside shoulder ligaments, eventually reducing the most athletic of fieldsmen, like David Gower, into a one-throw-per-session cripple. The wear on the inside of the shoulder socket caused by constant arm swinging with a cocked wrist creates insidious damage. Wanting Warne to survive, to see more of him, we must hope that he is not only super bowler but super body. Without wrapping himself in cotton wool, he needs to take care.

Now that he has outperformed every other Australian legspinner in Test history, he also needs to keep a level head. He can best do that by studying his predecessors. The best were not just great bowlers but fine men, interesting characters, well loved and respected, who grew with their achievements like solid timber.

Arthur Mailey spun the ball like a top, wrote a classic book called 10 For 66 And All That, and was such a clever cartoonist that his originals now command a price far greater than his Test fee. Clarrie Grimmett, a New Zealander, came into Tests when he was 30, establishing the tradition among cricketing baldies that the first item donned is not the jockstrap, but the cap.

Bill O`Reilly, the Tiger, had a turn of phrase the envy of a cockney comic but was as conscientious at his reporter`s desk as at the crease. Less talented as a beginner, Richie Benaud worked hardest at his game, practice making perfect.

That virtue, together with a physique of enviable durability, has taken Marshall to the position of top coconut, not only among West Indian fast bowlers, but also, in one vital respect, has established him as the best in all the world.

The key statistic for all mature bowlers, especially men of pace, is the strike rate, the number of overs needed to take a wicket. Marshall`s figure is under eight, surpassing even that of Richard Hadlee, who had far less competition for wickets within his own team, and all other contemporaries. Sydney Barnes needed fewer than seven overs; his reputation grows with the years.

Yet when you see Marshall in the street he hardly looks one of nature`s fast bowlers. He lacks the height of Curtly Ambrose, the elegance of Michael Holding, the imposing presence of Wes Hall or Ian Bishop, and has none of the animal strength of Andy Roberts, with whom he shares the attribute of an astute cricketing brain.

Physically, Marshall is like the first generation of great black bowlers: Herman Griffith, Learie Constantine, Manny Martindale, none of them huge but all quick enough to frighten. Keen Barbadian judges, such as Tony Cozier, knew Marshall was special even as a teenager. He had pace off the pitch. To some, his potential may have looked limited, with his sprinting run and fast arm action not the mark of a stayer. What Marshall has demonstrated, in campaign after campaign, is rhythm, the source of purity in a bowling action, the everlasting antidote to strain and breakdown.

There is more to Marshall than that, however. His victory has been in the mind, in his willingness to try on a wet Friday in Basingstoke as well as in a World Cup final, in his ability to add the cleverness of variety to compensate for the ageing process. Recently, Mark Nicholas, the Hampshire captain, has been as fulsome in his praise of Marshall the veteran as those who first spotted the potential.

Hostile without being a thug, more interested in wickets than bruises, Marshall has never been in danger of the charge of bringing the game into disrepute, unlike some of his generation.

Those of us who have enjoyed his professionalism wish him well and worry about his future. Too many fast bowlers fade into misery: however, Constantine became High Commissioner for Trinidad, Hall is minister for tourism in Barbados and Roberts is Antigua`s most famous fisherman. So there is hope for one of the game`s gentlemen, and hope that Warne becomes one.

Source :: Sunday Times, Sep 19, 1993