World Cricket: Remembering 'Pace like Fire'

There has been considerable debate in cricket circles over the years about the best-ever fast bowling partnership eg., Younis-Akram, Trueman-Statham, Lindwall-Miller, MacDonald-Gregory, Walsh-Ambrose, Lillee-Thomson and more recently, McGrath-Gillespie. However, in the era when the West Indies dominated world cricket, it often seemed that they were carried by the brute force of a fast bowling quartet. Although it's perhaps a sin to exclude their most destructive single practitioner, Malcolm Marshall, outside of any estimation of their greatest-ever quartet, I had the privilege of seeing Roberts, Holding, Garner and Croft hunt as a lethal and relentless pack in the late 70s.

What were the ingredients of this potent mix of complementary bowlers?

Although all four were bowling right-arm fast, they offered the full spectrum of artillery, namely: Andy Roberts - fairly short in height, his bustling round arm action allowed him to bowl outswingers with the new ball that were difficult to pick up in the air. His deceptive pace, late swing, nagging accuracy and low delivery trajectory saw him collect a lot of lbw and caught behind dismissals.

Michael Holding - not called 'Whispering Death' without reason, he had the most fluent, languid fast bowling action in the game's history. A champion middle distance runner in his youth, he naturally favoured a long run up to the crease and his effortless poetry in motion belied a capacity to generate great pace and bounce. Without warning, he could disrupt the batsman by going off a short run up to send down even quicker deliveries (was he the game's greatest ever exponent of mixing long-run and short-run deliveries?). Holding's stamina and athleticism also meant he could bowl all day if required.

Joel Garner - if you are 6ft 8ins tall and have a reach-for-the-sky action where the ball is being delivered from a height of ten feet, then what you lose in pace will be made up for with bounce. Garner's ability to make the ball rear up off a good length on seemingly dead pitches made him an extremely awkward proposition in the era before bowling machines would be able to simulate such bounce in net practice. He was the perfect support bowler after opening spells from Roberts and Holding.

Colin Croft - like Garner, a member of the awkward squad but for different reasons. Where Garner went vertical, Croft went horizontal with a curious windmill action that allowed him to slant the ball away from left-handed batsmen and worry the right-handers with uncommon inswing. This crosswards bowling line was accentuated by his delivery point wide of the crease and also provided camouflage for a Daniel Vettori type capacity to subtly change pace within the same action. Never a candidate at risk of being warned for running on the pitch, I felt Croft often got away with the opposite in putting his feet outside the popping crease at the point of delivery.

So there you have it.

I salute Roberts, Holding, Garner and Croft as the greatest fast bowling quartet who bowled together in cricket history. Can you think of a better quartet? For example, are Larwood, Allen, Voce and Bowes turning in their graves at such heresy?